


Behind the Locked Door

by UnseelieWench



Category: Gideon the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Dystopia, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Fake Dating, Griddlehark, Slow Burn, futuristic dystopia, idiots to lovers, oh god they were roommates, you can fit so many tropes in this baby
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-01 05:30:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 28
Words: 89,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21398152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnseelieWench/pseuds/UnseelieWench
Summary: It figures that the only college with the badass Cavalier program is also the college that Harrow Nonagesimus wants to attend. Oh well. Campus is big, right? She'll probably never see that pointed little face again.
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 397
Kudos: 643





	1. One Last Duty, Crux

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sixofsextants](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sixofsextants/gifts).

Of course Crux had let Harrow ride in the front seat, even though Gideon had totally called shotgun when they picked up the rental limo at the airport. Harrow had shot her an ice-cold _ I don’t fucking think so _ look and moved with the unstoppable force of the glaciers that had no doubt spawned her and gotten in the front seat anyway. Crux had taken the time to cuss Gideon out in his gargling-rocks way, which had been kind of funny for once. The worst he could do to her now was leave her at the airport, but since she didn’t want to run around the five-terminal mess looking for the right bullet train to take her to Canaan’s main campus she just stared at him and grinned until he wound down and slouched his way over to the driver’s seat with ill grace. 

Gideon flipped him off behind his back, then took a last look around the airport. As Mainland buildings go it looked too much like the Antarctic research facility she’d grown up in to hold much interest. Long, blue-lit rooms with low ceilings and aluminum furniture, people walking around with Things to Do and Places to Go that were important and interesting. Even the servitors were the same brand, though most of the robots working in the airport were bipedal, which was stupid. The four- and six-legged variety they owned down at the south pole had been way more practical. Not that Gideon had owned much, really. Even the trust fund in her name was inaccessible to her until she turned twenty-one. Which was in three fuckin’ days, hallelujah and praise the Merciful World Leader whose banking system hadn’t collapsed yet. 

Gideon felt a gentle tug on the strap of her grey canvas duffel bag and turned, surprised to find a servitor offering to take it for her. These biped models moved quietly, damn. “I got this, homeboy,” she told it, shooing the pseudo person away. It had a creepy blank face painted on it that was no doubt supposed to make it look more professional or friendly but just gave you the impression that it was two twitches away from drawing a knife and pursuing you (quietly) down the hall as you ran screaming. “You just load up Harrow’s shit in the trunk. My bag’s riding with me.”

Harrow, of course, had a full set of matched luggage. Black. With matte black clasps and only the silver H. N. monograms on the handles to tell it apart from all the other fancy bland boring-ass suitcases in this place. Gideon’s bag had been one of the few things that she was sure her parents had owned before they died in a freak blizzard, and she’d crawl through a blizzard of her own before she let anyone take it away. Harrow, on the other hand, had bought all-new everything when they enrolled. Probably because she had no soul or feelings, Gideon figured. It would explain her chosen ‘look’ for university. Harrow had sneered at her and called it ‘gothic lolita’ and said it was in fashion with the robotics crew. Gideon had replied that that made sense since it made her look like a freaky animatronic doll.

“Nav,” came the soulless being’s voice from behind her.

Gideon did a smooth pirouette and smiled at the barely-cracked window that concealed her nemesis. “Yes, Dark Princess of the South?”

“Get in the car,” Harrow’s voice answered, low and menacing, “or we will run over your foot as we leave.”

“Harsh.” Gideon shifted her bag and pulled open her door, though. Crux would no doubt love to run over her foot as a final punishment, justified in his mind by her constant tendency to do things like _ exist _ and _ breathe his air _. She shoved the heavy, lumpy canvas sack into the seat and climbed in next to it. Perversely, the seat restraints decided to recognize her bag as a person too because the soft belts that snaked out to secure her to the seat were matched by another pair that criss-crossed her bag, holding it in place with a safe mechanical hug.

She adjusted her jacket under her own seatbelts. Her shades were in the inner pocket and the belt was squishing them against her boob. Harrow had gone all in black for the aesthetic, but Gideon had ordered all black clothes because what even was fashion? She had black jeans, black track shoes, black T-shirts and a black leather jacket. Everything matched, laundry day would be easy. The only thing that wasn’t black was her socks. She had gone a bit crazy, there. But people couldn’t see her socks under the long pants so the only colour she was showing off was her short red hair, slicked back to keep it out of her eyes. 

“Just think,” Gideon said brightly, stretching out her legs to let her feet rest on the bottom of Harrow’s seat back, “one last duty, Crux, and I’ll be out of your life forever!”

“What do you know of duty,” Crux grouched, peering myopically at the navigation panel on the car’s dash. His gnarled finger hovered above the glass as he pecked out the address for the campus. “You’ve been nothing but a burden your entire life, when you could have been useful. This is your last chance to make something of yourself, but you’ll doubtless piss it away…”

Gideon stopped listening, instead slowly flexing her legs to make Harrow’s chair rock. Just enough that Crux wouldn’t notice. Harrow pretended to ignore her. Gideon dug her toes into the back of Harrow’s seat, a bit higher, and off-center, trying to prod her back through the thick synthetic foam. As the car hummed to life and pulled away from the curb, though, she planted her feet on the floor and leaned forward to peer eagerly through the window. 

Her first impression of Mainland as they cleared the terminal’s parking lineup was one of distance, and the kind of perspective you only saw in the 3d vids. The facility she had grown up in had very few windows, since there was nothing worth looking at outside in the antarctic. On the few occasions she had gone outside, perspective was impossible. Was a chunk of ice a distant boulder? A small but close-up rock? Impossible to know and even harder to care. But here there were things like lampposts and cars and _ more _cars, holy shit. A fat freight dirigible blocked half the sky to her right and behind her the air was split with a low, resentful scream as a jet took off down a runway. The limo merged into traffic like a pebble in a landslide, heading for the highway. The airport was a hive of activity and she had never seen such a crowd outside of shows, which gave the whole scene a surreal feel, like none of it was really happening. She pinched her own leg, hard, to make sure she wasn’t just dreaming again. 

The view was cut off as they took the ramp up onto the highway and the high grey walls blocked her view of the world. She was about to sit back and poke Harrow again when the walls suddenly lit up, projecting a huge face that filled her vision and made her yell in surprise like an idiot. 

“It’s an advertisement, Griddle,” Harrow’s voice came, long-suffering, from the front seat.

“It’s on the _ wall _ ,” Gideon protested. She craned her neck and saw that as people drove, adds flickered to life on the walls of the highway, keeping pace with the cars. The initial image that had freaked her out - the close up of the Leader’s benign face with the words WELCOME TO MAINLAND and YOU WILL OBEY LAWS AND REGULATIONS - was soon replaced with what could only be an add for some kind of recreational drug, because a bunch of unfairly attractive young women were laughing and eating salads while wearing yoga gear in some kind of garden. One of them _ hugged _another one. “God, I wish that was me,” she muttered.

The next add made her heart pound for a different reason. She grinned, pressing her nose to the window as the wall flashed through a series of short cuts showing athletic young men and women kicking ass at their various sports: jousting, climbing, shooting, wrestling, fencing. The last closeup was of a wicked cool babe in a sensuit locked in virtual combat, her light sword piercing a target a millisecond before the logo of the Canaan Cavaliers burst onto the screen. 

Gideon was intensely aware of the tightly-rolled nanosword shoved into a boot at the bottom of her pack. Her hands itched to hold it again, to flick the power on and watch it snap erect so fast the tip broke the sound barrier. The whip-crack _ on _ , the hum of _ deadly, _ the feel of the molecule-thick edge biting into the air, sending up wafts of ozone that glowed lightning blue as she swung it. It was her most prized possession in the world.

The fact that the nanosword was super illegal was just a bonus.

“I bet the fitness room is sick,” she said absently, staring through an add about radiation cream as her mind wandered back to the little pamphlet the school had sent them. There had been tons of paperwork, too, but the pamphlet had pictures so she had actually read it. “I can’t wait to be a Cavalier.”

“It will be a tragic mistake,” Crux grated, “for the distinguished halls of Canaan University to be represented at the meets by a miserable failure like you.”

“Blow it out your ass, Crux,” Gideon said, but without heat. She was still savouring the mental image. It was so _ close _now. She took a deep breath, steadying her pulse, forcing her fists to unclench the way Crux’s goddamn sphincter never would. “I’m already guaranteed a shot at it. My dad was a Cav back in his day.”

Harrow grunted acknowledgement, which was weird. Gideon had thought she was trying to ignore her during their last moments together. “He was,” she said again, always poking for a reaction. Pissing off Harrow was the only benefit of living near her. She may as well get her last few licks in before parting ways forever, blessed be, hallelujah. “A super awesome one. And I’m gonna be even better. All the hot bitches’ll be lining up to check me out.”

“That is the most -” Crux began, but stilled immediately as a pale hand appeared from in front of the shotgun seat to touch his arm.

“Leave it, Crux,” Harrow said quietly. 

“Yeah, Crux,” Gideon agreed, drunk with the power of no longer giving a fuck. “For once in your life let me enjoy a thought. You’re not gonna be able to piss all over my parades in another eight minutes,” she added, noting the ETA on the dash screen.

She leaned back in her seat again, flexing her legs against Harrow’s seat back to vent her nervous energy. “You excited, Harrowhark? Imagining life without me around? Already planning out how to win at school?”

From the front seat came a quiet voice, calm and dry as the grave. “Yes.”

Gideon rolled her eyes and looked back out the window. Robot Harrow confirmed. Abandoning the attempt at conversation, she began to sing 99 bottles of beer on the wall, just loud enough for them to hear. 

She got to 45 bottles before they finally took the exit to Canaan U’s main campus.


	2. Nice Cupcakes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Third House students seem friendly, one time out of three.

Canaan campus was gorgeous, and Gideon stared around, clutching her duffel bag and drinking in the sight of it all with the thirst of a marooned sailor. The vegetation caught her attention first, despite the eclectic mix of steepled, gothic buildings and soaring glass research towers. She couldn’t get over how _ green _ everything was. The grass was perfectly manicured, the trees were tall and straight, reaching up with welcoming hands towards the too-blue sky, artfully dotted with scudding clouds. She had a weird sense that it was all too good for her, that it couldn’t be real. She was on a movie set, or it was all a trick. This couldn’t be her new home. Nothing good ever happened to her, because the powers that be never allowed it. 

The canvas twisted painfully in her grip and she held onto that sensation, letting it ground her as she let out a slow breath. Crux was muttering behind her as a pair of robot servitors smoothly trotted up to the car to remove Harrow’s baggage. Harrow herself was standing ramrod straight at Gideon’s side, also staring at the campus. 

She ought to say something. Something scathing and witty. Like ‘see you never!’ or ‘Harrow, I just want to say, on this first day of the rest of our lives, I have always hated your face.’ Or-

“Nav,” Harrow said.

Gideon, to her eternal mortification, squeaked. In a sudden panic, she blurted a too-loud “BYE,” and fled into the campus without a backwards glance.

She stretched her long legs, taking fast strides that Harrow would have to jog to match, and focused on putting as much distance between them as she could before Harrow could announce that Gideon was not really enrolled here, that it had all been a funny joke by her parents. Like the field trips Harrow had gone on, but not Gideon (Harrow wasn’t staring at trees because she had seen them before). Like the new clothes Harrow would get, but not Gideon (how was she supposed to know you take the tags off of things? She had spent her life in castoffs until last week). Like how every time a new kid came to stay at the facility with their parents for a few months, they’d be friends with Gideon until an adult let them know what was up. Like the adults themselves, ranging from apologetically distant to gleefully malicious for her entire life, because Harrow’s Parents Ran the Laboratory, and Gideon’s parents had merely died there.

Gideon stopped, blinking, in a courtyard, and looked around. Where the fuck was she even going?

“Whatever,” she muttered, and kept moving. She’d explore campus for a while and figure things out. How hard could it be? It was a school, after all, people were supposed to teach her stuff like how to register. She made an effort to pull her thoughts out of her ass, though, and to look around. 

The path she was walking down was one of many paved stripes that criss-crossed the green lawn. The air smelled like the greenhouse, rich and thick and full of different scents that she couldn’t quite identify but would like to try and lick. She walked past a fancy building that was probably an old church or a parliament or something, looming on her left. Whatever it was, it was judging her. She took the next path to the right, heading towards a small crowd of what might actually be real life university students. 

There were about a dozen of them, gathered around a cheap folding table that was garishly decorated with flowers and rainbows and smiling cartoon faces. Brightly coloured cupcakes were displayed on the table beside pamphlets of some kind, and a guy with poofy brown hair and a smarmy university sweater-vest was chatting up two of the milling students. Behind the table, talking to another student, was a tall blonde woman that Gideon’s brain could only classify as _ dangerously hot. _She was tan and fit and her hair was so poofy it was like she was the only one of the unwashed, greasy masses who had discovered that shampoo existed. Her gold jewelry shot tiny reflected suns everywhere, and she had a tattoo of a flock of butterflies that ran up her calf to where her fitted track shorts cut it off. 

The student that Butterfly-girl had been talking to was now staring at Gideon with a flat look. Student-girl had a pale mouth pressed into a thin line of disapproval and her shoulders looked too narrow for the heavy book bag hanging off of them. She’d probably get along with Harrow, Gideon thought. They could sneer at everyone together. But who cared about either of them, because Butterfly Girl was turning to see who had earned the death glare. 

“Oh! Well, hello there,” Butterfly Girl said in a voice that could have sold Crux a party hat. Her face lit up in a bright smile that displayed white, even teeth as she sashayed over. Her eyes were violet and held Gideon’s gaze effortlessly. 

Gideon, sensibly, froze in the presence of an apex social predator.

“Welcome to Canaan U!” continued the woman who was totally a professional actress, hired to play the Pretty Student. “My name is Coronabeth, but you can call me Corona. That’s my sister, Ianthe,” she said, waving at the tall-and-blonde version of Harrow behind the table, “and that’s Babs,” she added, with a little gesture at Hair Boy that made the bangle at her wrist catch the light. “We’re from Third House. We always take care of welcoming new students to campus life! What’s your name?”

Gideon stared at her, feeling heat pool in her cheeks. It wasn’t the fact that Coronabeth was hot. Or even that she was taller than Gideon. She just seemed so _ happy _ to see her. It was freaking her out. “Gideon,” she managed. “Gideon Nav.”

Coronabeth’s smile broadened, and she looked absolutely charmed. “Do you know what house you’ll be joining? _ All _ the students join a house.”

“Um.” Gideon wracked her brain, trying to remember what the little pamphlet thing had said about houses. Something about student life? “That’s the sorority thing, right?”

Coronabeth laughed, but there was no malice in it. “It used to be. The fraternities and sororities merged recently. Did you know, studies have shown that everyone behaves better and learns more efficiently in mixed gender groups? So now we just have houses! There’s eight of them,” she continued, floating over to the table to pick up a pamphlet. “Well, nine if you include the first house, but they’re faculty only.”

Gideon trailed along behind her, caught in her wake. Ianthe continued to stare through her like she was trying to read the secrets pinned to the back of Gideon’s skull. Gideon gave her a wink, and she scowled. “Which house are the cavaliers in?” Gideon asked Coronabeth, accepting a glossy pamphlet with more pictures on it. 

“Oh, every house has some cavs in it!” Coronabeth looked her over, absently twirling a lock of gold hair around one finger. “They couldn’t compete in the intramurals without cavs. But if you’re going to be a cavalier you can pick any house! You should consider the third house,” she said with an inviting smile. “We _ always _win. Cupcake?”

Gideon stared, confused. “Did you just call me Cupcake?”

Coronabeth’s laugh was high and clear, and drew admiring looks from the other students. “Would you _ like _a cupcake? Here, take this one,” she insisted, passing her a confection from the round tray. “You’ll like it. It’s ginger.”

The cupcake was delicious, and Gideon recognized the taste of gingerbread from the stale leftovers of yule time gingerbread houses she used to nibble on for days. It tasted like those the same way a solid night’s sleep in a warm bed resembled a nap you took in a chair. 

“Can I have another one?” Gideon asked over the appreciative gurgle of her stomach. “They’re really good. Did you make ‘em?”

“Babs did,” Coronabeth said, her smile still dazzling as she offered Gideon a darker cupcake with sprinkles this time. “You can have as many as you like! Did you miss lunch?”

This cupcake was chocolate, and just as good as the first one. “Yeah, I just flew in,” Gideon said around a mouthful of dessert. She wiped off crumbs on the back of her hand before continuing. “I should figure out where I’m going,” she added, shifting the duffel bag on her shoulder. No one else was carrying around all of their worldly possessions, she noted.

“We can show you where to sign in,” one of the other students said, and Gideon blinked as she registered that the two students to her right were high schoolers. 

The one who had spoken was a girl with curly brown hair and brown skin, and the boy beside her matched her despite his Eastasian features and bleached-orange fauxhawk: both were punked out to the nines, with multiple ear piercings, angry Tshirts under torn black jackets, and short plaid kilts over leather pants. Their boots were pretty sick, though. Black combat boots with a bajillion holes for the laces that went up to just below the knee. Gideon wanted a pair like that. Except twice as big, cause these guys were babies. “Cool,” she agreed.

“Don’t try to steal her away, Jeannemary,” Coronabeth said lightly. “Third house saw her first.”

Gideon glanced back at the Thirdies. Corona still looked like a game show host, and Babs looked sulky under his hair. Ianthe’s flat stare of mixed dislike and suspicion was a familiar one to Gideon, almost a welcome sight in this new place. She knew where she stood with Ianthe already: as far away as possible. Babs’ cupcakes notwithstanding, she didn’t think she’d end up in the Third house. 

“Nice to meet you, Corona,” Gideon said, remembering her manners. “Ianthe,” she nodded, dropping her tone to recognize the threat, then gave a last upnod to Babs. “Cupcake.” 

“Gideon Nav, the Wannabe Cav,” he answered, his eyes petulantly narrowed. “I’ll see you in the ring.” He tried really hard to make that sound threatening, Gideon could tell, but the naked glee on her face at the prospect of fighting the Hair-Vest-Cupcake boy seemed to put him off. 

She left them to it and followed the babies away as Coronabeth chided Babs for not being welcoming enough.


	3. First Impressions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> First impressions are important.

The punklets led her through the maze of paths that wove between, around, and underneath buildings, even through an old tunnel that was absolutely covered in brightly coloured graffiti. Six feet of neon green letters told her to HAVE A WONDERFUL DAY :D :D opposite dripping red ones that looked like they were sprayed through a stencil, warning her that IT'S ALWAYS WATCHING. The tunnel was a riot of conflicting hues and messages that even covered the LEDs in the ceiling, giving different tints to their skin and clothing as they walked.

The two kids, Jeannemary and the boy, walked a few paces ahead of her, whispering to themselves. Every now and then one of them would glance back at her as if to make sure she was still following them, but beyond whispered “ _ You ask her! _ ” “ _ No, you do it! _ ” they didn’t say much. It was kind of hilarious. Gideon wasn’t used to people being intimidated by her. Maybe they were just shy because she was older.

She waited until they were back in the sunshine to bridge the gap. “So what grade are you guys in?”

Jeannemary jumped a bit at her voice. She exchanged a quick look with the boy before she answered, walking sideways to converse with Gideon without falling back beside her. “Isaac and I are new, like you. We’re just starting this year.”

Gideon looked between them, nonplussed. “But you’re -” she caught herself just before calling them out on being toddlers. “I mean you seem to know where you’re going,” she finished lamely.

A defensive tenseness left Issac’s shoulders and now he apparently found the courage to enter the conversation. “We got here two days ago. We’ve registered already and we’ve been exploring the campus.”

“Cool,” Gideon answered, full of her own questions. Were they really enrolled at the university? Were there no age requirements? Were these two actually way older than they looked? Were there a lot of kids here or were they weird? “I’m enrolled, I got a confirmation letter and everything, but do you know if I have to sign something..?”

“Oh yeah, you can register at the residence,” Jeannemary said, falling back half a step towards Gideon in growing confidence. “They’ll give you your keycard. It’ll let you into the res, and your House, when you pick one. And if you’re a cav you’ll get free run of the sports facilities too, and the medic tent, which is actually a hospital building, and the food at the cafeteria is free, twenty four hours a day. It’s a good deal!”

Gideon peered more closely at the punklette. “You’re enrolled as a cav too?” 

Jeannemary nodded. “Pre-cav. It’s not that uncommon, where we’re from. I’ll take longer to graduate but it’s better to start training when you’re younger. You’ve obviously been training for years… right?” she added the last bit uncertainly, and skipped half a step up to be closer to Isaac again.

Gideon grinned a crooked grin. “As well as I could, yeah. The rec facilities at the south pole are kinda shit for fighting sims. The best one we had was the Lee Hand to Hand Combat sim, version 4, but I beat that last year, you know? We had a lot of good athletic kits, though,” she added, not wanting to sound like some South Pole hick. 

“Oh,” Jeannemary said in a small voice, then seemed to lose the nerve to ask her next question. She skipped a half step to fall back in beside Isaac, who pointed ahead of them.

“There’s our res,” he said, pointing at a tall brick building with lots of rectangular windows at even intervals. 

“Which house is this?” Gideon asked, scanning for signage. The building looked like it was in good shape but there was nothing outside of it that indicated what it was. The whole campus was like that - paths and buildings with no signs or labels. Maybe she could get a map. 

“The Houses are where you’ll spend your days,” Isaac said, glancing back at her over his skinny shoulder. “Students take their classes at the Houses, so they’re associated with different majors. But everyone from our year will live here. We didn’t see its name yet so we call it the Tall Res.”

“Gotcha.” Gideon followed them up the three wide steps and in through a sliding glass door to a sterile lobby, floored in white and ceilinged in reflective glass. “Which house are you two in?”

“Fourth house,” Jeannemary said. It was like the two of them had some unspoken agreement about who answered which kind of questions. “Human kinetics, fitness, athletics - basically pushing the limits of what human bodies can do. Right?” she gave a tight grin to Isaac, who returned a private little smile as he nodded. 

“I’m a student,” he explained. “Human Kinetics. Jeannemary came to Fourth house with me.”

“Hell yeah I did,” Jeannemary agreed, and they gave a little fistbump to each other, spiked wristbands flashing in the overhead lighting. 

It was adorable, and at the same time made a tiny spike of painful envy bloom between Gideon’s lungs. 

“Fourth house sounds cool,” she said, looking away. The lobby was empty and big, with the only distinguishing features the plate glass windows and a small terminal in the wall next to an elevator bank. She usually took the stairs but didn’t see a stairwell entrance. “Very Cavaliery.”

“You think so?” Jeannemary asked eagerly, her eyes wide again. 

Gideon pulled her attention back to her. “Yeah! Push the limits. Never say die.”

“Never say die is the Sixth’s motto,” Isaac said quietly, but Jeannemary shushed him.

Gideon rolled her eyes. “I gotta read that pamphlet,” she muttered, pushing past the two of them - though no pushing was required, since they parted at her approach like water drops on hydrophobic glass - to get to the terminal. "Which house has the robotics students?"

"Ninth," said Isaac promptly. "They do robotics, programming, and AI."

"Cool," Gideon said, "thanks." What she didn't say was that she definitely wouldn't be joining that one, because that must be the nerdy goth gang that her nemesis was hanging out with. Probably right now, meeting new evil and annoying people to be frenemies with.

“We’ll let you sign in,” Isaac said, sliding around behind her to catch Jeannemary’s hand.

“Yeah, uh. Enjoy your pamphlet,” Jeannemary agreed, following along towards the elevators.

“Thanks,” Gideon said, then stared at the screen trying not to laugh as she listened to their clearly audible whispers while they waited for the elevator.

_ “Enjoy your pamphlet?” _

_ “I don’t know! What?” _

_ “That’s a dumb thing to say!” _

_ “Oh my god lower your voice, she’ll hear you!” _

The elevator binged its mercy and swallowed the embarrassed teens, and Gideon let out a breath. Time to face the first bossfight. The Registrar.

She touched the screen and it blinked to life, showing the image of an attractiveish middle aged woman in some kind of generic suit, sitting in some kind of very clean generic office, apparently doing nothing but waiting for this call. “Hello,” her voice said in a singsong. “Welcome to Caanan University Mainland Campus. Please state your name.”

“Uh. Gideon Nav.” She peered at the woman, trying to figure out if it was an image of a real physical robot, or just a CG picture of one. “I need to register?”

“Gideon Nav. Student seventy two of your year. Please take your card, below.” Her chipper smile didn’t falter as she made a graceful little gesture downward, like she had put a document on the desk between them. 

Gideon glanced down. With a little beep and the blink of a light, the terminal slid a card out from a hidden slot. She took it. It had her picture on it - taken just now, she realized, which gave her the slightly puzzled frown of someone who didn’t really know what was going on - and her name and what looked like a CannanU.org email address, followed by her birthday, blood type, and then some numbers and letters that made no particular sense. She looked back up at the lady on the screen. “Okay. Got it. What now?”

“You are enrolled in the Cavalier Training Program, with your permanent status pending examination,” the robot lady said pleasantly. “At this point you can choose which optional courses you wish to follow, if any -”

“If any?” Gideon interrupted.

The lady’s smile was unshakable. “Courses are optional for Cavaliers. Training is mandatory. The reverse is true for students. You can also access the campus map, request keycard permissions, view accommodation status, withdraw -”

“That one,” Gideon said. “Accomodations. What room am I in?” 

“You are on the third floor,” the robot said pleasantly. “You have been assigned to apartment 3A.” As she spoke, her image shrank down into one corner as a black and white floorplan appeared on the screen. Gideon peered at it. It had four tiny bedrooms, but each had a door, which was cool. There was a bathroom with a shower, and another bathroom without one. In the middle of it all was a kitchen and living area. “Two of your three roomates have already arrived, and selection of rooms must be arranged with them.” 

“Oh yeah? Who are my roomates?” Gideon wondered. Was it the punklets? That would be hilarious. 

The woman’s smile was painted in place but she blinked once at Gideon through the screen. “I am unable to grant you access to other student’s information at this time. Would you care to see a course menu? Or apply to a house? Or -”

“Can I do that shit later?” Gideon asked, shifting her bag on her shoulder. It was heavy, and her jacket was getting hot. A bead of sweat trickled down her side.

“Registration tasks are due by the end of the week,” the woman answered with a smile.

“Cool,” Gideon said, already turning away for the elevators. “Later.”

A quick trip up the lift brought her to a short hallway that ended in a double steel door, with matching single doors on each side of the hall. The door on the left said 3A door the door on the right said 3B. The floor had thin grey carpet that showed a worn path that split and stopped at the apartment doors. Gideon stopped in front of 3A and wondered if she should knock. But she lived here now, right?

She waved the key card against the black sensor pad beside the handle, and was rewarded with a little blue light and a metallic click. The handle was cold, but the door swung open when she pulled.

Inside was the small living space that the floorplan had promised. Beyond it were three doors, the middle probably to the bathroom and the other two were two of the bedrooms, still open and empty. She had expected to find two roomates who had already moved in and unpacked but they evidently hadn't. A woman with short dark hair and messy bangs lounged on the floor, leaning back against a heavy trunk instead of against the couch. She was wearing light green slacks and a V neck shirt in the same fabric over a white T-shirt. She was also holding a can of beer that she raised in greeting. Her bare arms were beefy, and Gideon sensed a fellow cav. A cav that looked 600% Fucking Done. 

To Gideon’s left was a skinny guy with pale hair and thick glasses arguing with the robot registrar lady on a small screen near the door.

"In what world is it  _ not _ an example of foul language?" He demanded, ignoring Gideon as she awkwardly edged by behind him. "Regulation twenty nine b, point three, clearly states that exceptions must be made…"

"Hey," Gideon nodded to the girl on the floor. "I'm Gideon."

"Camilla," she answered. "Sorry about the mess," she gestured with a finger at the trunks and bags stacked haphazardly in the living room. "Palamedes wants to sort out his student ID before he does anything else."

"His student ID?" Gideon let her heavy duffel bag fall to the ground with a thud, rolling her shoulders in relief. 

"You see your email address?" Camilla asked.

Gideon fished the card out of her pocket. "Uh. NavGid72@CanaanU.org? Yeah. So?"

"So it's the first three letters of your last name, then the first name, then your enrollment number." Camilla shifted to one side and held up hers. HecCam70.

"Oh," Gideon said with a grin. "So he got-"

"In what world," Palamedes yelled, losing his temper at the screen, "is SEXPAL69 AN APPROPRIATE EMAIL ADDRESS?"

Gideon was unashamed, later, of how spectacularly she totally fucking lost it. 


	4. Settling In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And then there were four.

Camilla was willing to share her beer with Gideon, which made her Gideon's new Favourite Person, beating out the previous title holder, the virtual trainer in the athletics sim. Kiki may not have been real, Gideon reflected, but she had been encouraging, supportive, and had looked good in leotards.

Gideon was lounging on the couch now, her feet propped up on her duffel bag, nursing her second beer as she watched Camilla and Sex Pal the Sixty Ninth move themselves in. They had picked the two rooms opposite the front door, with the full bathroom between them. Once Palamedes had turned off the screen, Camilla had rolled to her feet like a soldier ready to march after a pause.

"I need to speak to an actual _ human,_" Palamedes complained, picking up a smaller bag from the floor, then just standing in the middle of the room holding it as Camilla moved the larger trunks into his room or her room. "The degree of automation here is impressive but this is a prime example of the limitations of artificial intelligence."

"No sense of humour?" Gideon asked, still grinning. She had laughed until she cried after his outburst, slumping to her knees as her legs gave out. He had ended the call to the sound of her wheezing gasps.

"That," he agreed, giving her a slightly resentful look, "and the inability to predict _ other's _ sense of humour."

"Man, I don't know why you're complaining," Gideon said. "I'd kill for a sick handle like that. You should own it! Get it printed on a jacket and be the living legend of SexPal69."

Palamedes clutched his satchel tighter and flushed, unhappy. "How am I supposed to use my official university email for research queries with a moniker like that?"

"Proudly," Gideon repeated.

Camilla came out of Palamedes' room, pushing back her short, sweat-damp bangs. "I'm sure you can get it straightened out. Do you want me to unpack your trunk for you?"

"No, thanks," Palamedes sighed, some of the indignation fading. "I want to make sure I'm optimizing the space. You just do your things."

"Okay. Hey, I've got more hangers than I'll need, so let me know if you want a few extra," she answered, already moving to her own room.

“Thank you,” he said with an absent frown furrowing his pale eyebrows. “... we should do an inventory of common items,” he decided, putting his satchel back down where he had gotten it and heading to the kitchen to rifle through the cupboards. “There’s no sense in duplicating effort. That’s how you end up in an apartment with four can openers. Did you bring anything you want to keep in the common space, Gideon?”

“Hunh?” Gideon looked away from Camilla, who had reappeared, spotted the satchel, and was now carrying it into Palamedes’ room without comment. “What, like can openers?”

Palamedes peered around the cupboard door to look at her gravely. “Yes. Like can openers.”

“No, I just have my own shit. Were we supposed to bring dishes and stuff?”

“It’s optional,” Palamedes assured her. “I brought my own linens, for example, but there are also sheets and towels provided for us.”

“I’m gonna change your bedding,” Camilla called. 

“Thank you,” he called back, already looking through the lower cupboards. The clank of pots and pans rattling around followed him through the small kitchen.

Gideon should get off her ass. She should go help, or at least start unpacking her own things. But she sat, holding a half-full beer that was slowly warming in her hand, and listened to the casual calls between her two roommates, trying to figure out why the interactions were making her chest ache again. There was a subtle intimacy between them. That they were okay unpacking each other’s things was bizarre to her. She would have pitched a fit if Harrow had tried to touch her duffel bag, and Harrow had had her confined to quarters for a day after Gideon had tried to sneak a raw fish into her trunk. Gideon couldn’t figure out what Palamedes and Camilla were to each other. They weren’t smooching or exchanging_ lingering glances. _ Were they like an old married couple? An arranged marriage? Was SexPal in a sexless, arranged, pragmatic marriage?

“Hey are you two, like, a thing?” she asked intelligently, interrupting Palamedes’ count of the spoons.

“What?” he asked, distracted.

“We’re cousins,” Camilla said shortly. “We grew up together, so almost like siblings.”

“Oh.” Gideon nodded slowly. Siblings. That fit, though movies had taught her to expect more teasing and rivalry. “Cool.”

“Do you have siblings, Gideon?” Palamedes asked politely as Camilla brought out a stack of dish towels.

“No. Only child.” Unable to sit idle in the face of such industry any longer, Gideon slid her feet to the floor and unfolded herself from the couch. “So if I get on your nerves, let me know, okay? I might, uh,” she searched for the phrase for an instant before finding it, “miss social cues.”

“Oh, I’m not fussy,” Palamedes assured her, prompting Camilla to raise both eyebrows at him behind his back. “I’m sure we’ll all get along fine.”

“... I’d like that.” Gideon had to clear her throat, finding it suddenly tight. “I’m gonna grab this room and unpack,” she announced, hauling up her duffel with her free hand. The room opposite from Palamedes' was closest so she fled into it.

She shut the door behind her and leaned back against it, scanning the room that would be her new home. 

The bed in front of her was made with light grey sheets and a plain wool blanket on top. The floor had the same grey carpet from the hall, worn in the middle of the room. The closet doors were mirrored, which was either a new fashion or else super tacky, but either way she was going to wake up to the sight of her own bedhead every morning. The desk was metal, with a little spinny chair tucked into it. 

Everything was just… really grayyyy.

"Okay," Gideon said quietly, gathering her resolve. There was only one thing she could think of that would make this room absolutely _ hers _, instead of a redo of the lab. It would be hard work, and come at a great personal cost, but if she could borrow some tape from Camilla, she could absolutely cover her walls in the most choice torn-out pages from the titty mags in her bag.

"RIP in pieces, _ Frontline Titties_," she said, saluting the smut as she found it under her T-shirts.

One hour and a borrowed roll of medical tape later, Gideon's room was done. Her closet was full of black clothes, her leather jacket was draped over the back of the desk chair. Her training gear was hung on hooks on the bed-and-window wall, the worn leather of the pads and gloves kind of matching the dark grey curtains. She had tucked the hospital-white pillow into a T-shirt to give it a softer cotton cover, and although she didn’t have enough smut to wallpaper the whole room (yet), above the desk she had plastered a collage of the finest warrior-babe pin ups that money could order in the Antarctic. Hot and tasteful! Only one of them had a nip-nop showing. They were basically art, really. All in all it was still pretty monochrome, but less gray, more gay. 

Gideon grinned, feeling proud. It might be stupid and petty but she had never been allowed to decorate her own room at the lab. She was always very aware that she was living in someone else's home. This room would be different. She would decorate it with whatever she liked, and it would be _ hers. _

She walked out of her room to find Camilla and Palamedes heading out. 

“I’m going for a run,” Camilla said, and it was abrupt enough that she didn’t even have to add ‘and I don’t want company’, which Gideon appreciated. Clarity was good.

“I’m going to find the administration building and sort out this absurdity,” SexPal69 said, scowling at his keycard. 

Gideon nodded. “Sounds like you’re both gonna be running in circles. Eyy!” She was proud of that one, but Palamedes just gave her a sour look and followed Camilla out the door.

Left alone in her apartment (_ her _ apartment!), Gideon started to explore. The kitchen area looked much more kitchen-y now that there were little towels and a mini blender and one single (she checked) can opener in the second drawer. There was a wood table and four chairs, presumably in case the roommates ever actually ate together. Aside from beer, there was no food in the fridge or cupboards, though. At least not yet. She needed to find the closest junk food retailer and buy a huge box of cookies, and then buy a big black marker to write GIDEON’S on them, and she would eat them all herself and it would be absolutely amazing. 

The living area was alright, too. Couches that were sturdy enough for her to jump on them without creaking, though the coffee table protested when she gave it the same treatment. Flimsy garbage. The bathrooms were tiny and managed to be so devoid of personality that if she hadn’t been so sensible and well-adjusted she would have gotten flashbacks to the austere little washroom she had been permitted to use growing up. Gideon smiled brightly at her reflection in the mirror. “It’s okay,” she promised the bathroom. “I’ll fix you too. Gonna get some sweet decals in here. Stick ‘em all over the shower stall and make it a big rainbow tube. Then we’ll get some yellow rubber duckies. Tiny ones. And we’ll -” she stopped as she heard the front door unlock behind her. 

She turned back to the main room, wondering if it was Camilla or Palamedes. “What’d you fo-uuuuuuucking hell?” She froze in the bathroom doorway, staring at Harrowhark Nonagesimus who was equally frozen in her front entrance, and staring at her. “No. No way.”

“Nav?” Harrow hesitated, looking the most confused that Gideon had ever seen her.

“Nope.” Gideon edged around the living room wall towards her room, unwilling to get any closer to Harrow than she had to. “This isn’t happening. This is my place. It’s gonna be awesome and cool and we already have a can opener. You don’t live here, go away.”

Harrow pinched the bridge of her nose, closing her eyes as she exhaled. “I can’t believe this,” she muttered quietly.

Gideon’s heartbeat was in her ears. Adrenaline made her fingers shake and she fought to rein it in. “Did you expect me to be happy to see you?” she demanded. No. This was not happening. Absolutely not.

"I didn’t expect to see you at all,” Harrow replied icily, letting her hand drop. She stepped into the apartment deliberately, and from twelve feet away Gideon jerked like she’d been slapped.

“I don’t want to fucking live with you, Harrow,” she blurted out, her voice rising. Maybe she could jump out the window and find Palamedes. Maybe they could shake down the registrar together. “I just got _ away _ from you! Get out!”

“I was told 3A, Nav.” Harrow had regained control of her features, but Gideon could see her skin flush through her pale makeup. “This is apartment 3A.”

“This is your parents’ fault,” Gideon said through a throat so tight it came out as a whisper. Her hand fisted in her own shirt, pressing down on the nausea in her gut. “They did this to me.”

“They wouldn’t _ dare, _” Harrow scowled, but Gideon wasn’t buying it.

“They hate me,” she said, throwing the truth out there like a gauntlet on the ground between them. “They’ve always hated me, no matter what I did! And I hate them too! And you! Their little _ minion_. How far is your family gonna haunt me, Nonagesimus? My entire childhood wasn’t enough? You guys are going to start trashing the rest of my life too?”

“I don’t,” Harrow began, but faltered. “It’s,” she raised her hands helplessly in front of her as if she could catch the words she was dropping. “I didn’t - this wasn’t my idea!”

“I don’t believe you,” Gideon blurted, staring at her. “What are the odds we’d be together, otherwise?”

“Approximately five percent,” Harrow answered quietly, without thinking, like her soul had left her body and her brain, unable to resist showing off how smart she was, was operating autonomously. 

“Registrar!” Gideon stalked over to the tiny screen by the door, and Harrow stumbled back out of the way. She could see Harrow’s trunks in the hall, and a robot servitor just sorta standing there on its six feet, waiting for further instructions. She ignored it, scowling at the screen as it lit up. Yes, there she was, the dread being of Canaan U in her ugly suit. “Why is Harrow in my apartment?” 

Registraria the Soulless blinked once at Gideon, her smile unwavering. “All of your roommates have now arrived,” she said pleasantly and Gideon smashed her forehead against the wall above the screen in frustration. “At Canaan U, housing selections are based on order of registration. This is done to keep friends and family together whenever possible. The student experience -”

“Hold up!” Gideon rubbed the sharp pain in her forehead as she glared at the creature. “Harrow was finished her application the same day it arrived! Mine was done way later.”

“Nav,” Harrow’s voice was very small behind her, and Gideon refused to turn around and see her face. “I… I sent them in together. I didn’t know,” she protested quickly, because now Gideon _ did _ spin around. “I wanted to make sure they both went through so I sent them in the same packet, so if I got a receipt I’d know yours was in too. I didn’t know they used that for housing. That wasn’t written in the application package _ anywhere!_”

“That’s why you were nagging me to finish it?” Gideon could not believe this was happening. She slumped back against the wall, feeling utterly defeated. If it was _ protocol _ and _ regulations _ then there would be no fighting it, no last minute changes, no swapping. She knew how institutions worked. She was just as fucked as SexPal69. 

Harrow nodded mutely, her fingertips pressed to her temples as if she was in a state of great concentration. Even though there was nothing to concentrate on now. Canaan U didn’t allow off-campus housing and there was no other university with a program like the Cavalier one. Gideon didn’t want to leave and be defeated by Nonagesimus machinations. And since Canaan was also the ‘best’ school, Harrow wasn’t going to be convinced to leave either. 

“‘Kay,” Gideon said. She felt deeply weary, and her chest ached, and her head hurt, and this sucked. And worse, deep down there was a little worm of something inside her - not happiness, but the relief, maybe, of having the devil you knew around. This was a totally new world for her, and if Harrow was sitting around snidely saying things like ‘it’s an ad, Griddle’ well, at least she’d know what the ads were. Or something. “I am going to have another beer. Maybe a nap. Or a shower,” she trailed off as she tugged the fridge door open to raid another can of Camilla’s booze. 

When she turned around, Harrow was still standing in the doorway, staring at her like she wanted to light her on fire. It was mildly unsettling. “Your room’s that one,” Gideon said, just wanting to get this entire conversation over with before the awkwardness soaked into the carpet between them and caused a stain. She popped open the can with a satisfying fizz of released gas but Harrow was still staring at her with her narrow, hateful little face, the black lipstick barely visible on her lips as she pressed them together. 

Gideon took a long drink from the can without breaking eye contact. She wiped her mouth on the back of her free hand and pointed at her own door. “My room’s that one. And you’re not allowed in it.”

The childish taunt seemed to finally break whatever ice Harrow had summoned from the internal glacier that powered her. She looked down, then closed her eyes and let out a slow breath. Man, she really _ was _pissed to see Gideon in her apartment. The thought was cheering. Maybe this wasn’t all part of some grand scheme. Pissing off Harrow was always fun. Maybe there’d be a silver lining to this huge fiasco.

Without speaking further, Harrow turned and gestured to the servitor, using the wavy hand commands to tell it what to do. She wasn’t even showing off, Gideon knew. Harrow learned computer shortcuts the way Gideon learned weapon grips, and it wouldn’t occur to her to do it any other way than the most efficient one. Let the plebes use words to try and get the robots to obey them. Harrow the Robot Queen could command them with a gesture. It was annoying. 

Gideon left her nemesis to unpack and locked herself in her own room. She told her tablet to play ‘really angry music, really loud’, and lay with her face in her pillow as hard metal chords made her headache worse, but also, somehow, better.


	5. Seventh Heaven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything is awesome!

Gideon woke up at dusk, which was briefly confusing. This time of year the sun never set, back home (no, fuck that, this was her home now, she was never going back). She pushed herself up, blinking away lingering fuzziness. The tablet, still blaring angry beats (now accompanied by a screaming dude and some kind of flute), slid from the bed and landed face down on the floor. The singer vented his primal screams into the thin carpet. Gideon glanced around, getting her bearings, then surged out of bed with a spike of adrenaline when she saw someone else in her room. 

Oh. She was squaring off with her reflection. 

"Goddamn," she huffed, scowling at her tousled ass in the mirror. That was gonna take getting used to. 

The apartment was quiet and apparently empty, and Gideon's stomach was going to digest itself if she didn't eat something other than beer and cupcakes. She showered though, and changed into fresh jeans and a T-shirt before heading out, her shades perched on her freshly gelled hair. 

She had some notion of finding the punklets since they knew where the food was, but as she left she ran into two new faces in the hall, already waiting for the elevator. As they turned to look at her, Gideon slowed, flat out staring at the prettiest girls she had ever seen in person.

"Woah, hi," she greeted them intelligently.

They both smiled at her, and despite their similarities, Gideon was able to classify the first willowy brunette with long wavy hair as a Total Sweety, while the second willowy brunette with long wavy hair was clearly a Class A Social Predator, up there with Hot Cupcake Girl.

"Hi," said the Sweety. "You live in 3A? We're in 3B."

"That makes us neighbours," the Hottie said, like it was some kind of suggestion.

Innuendo and flirting was hard so Gideon just blurted "Uh yeah, I'm Gideon," like a good cav and let them make the words go.

"Dulcinea," said Sweety.

"Cytherea," said the other, and Gideon noticed she was wearing red lipstick.

"Are you guys…?" Gideon hesitated, glancing between them.

"Sisters?" Dulcinea guessed, right as Cytherea suggested "Dating?"

"Oh my god, mercy," Gideon laughed, both grateful and annoyed when the elevator chose that moment to bing. But then they all crowded into the little box and suddenly she didn't mind too much.

"We're distant cousins," Dulcinea said, "but the family relation is so far back it almost doesn't matter. We're good friends though."

"_Just _ friends," Cytherea added, her eyes amused as she looked Gideon over. "Dulcinea is interested in a boy."

"Boo," Gideon said. "Which one?"

Dulcinea blushed, looking down, and the spots of colour looked out of place and blotchy on her paper-pale skin. "Oh, um. I think he's in your apartment, actually."

"You've got a thing for _ Sex Pal? _" Gideon marvelled. 

"What?" Dulcinea looked at her with a puzzled little frown.

The elevator beeped its final beep and regurgitated them out into the lobby.

"I mean Palamedes," Gideon quickly said, following along wherever these two were going. "His email is SexPal69. Listen, tell him not to change it, cause that's a friggin’ gift."

"Oh nooo," Dulcinea gasped through her dainty fingers. Her nails were painted in lavender purple. They matched her flowy dress, and the soft flowers in her hair. "He must hate that!"

"He totally does," Gideon agreed, and realized she had lost track of the other one, who was dressed the same but all in green. She looked around and started a bit when she found Cytherea smiling on her other side. "So are you guys in the hot house?" 

"Depends on if you're joining the Seventh house or not," Cytherea said with a smile.

Oh god that was flirting, this chick was flirting with her. "Uh. I mean, shit, I might," Gideon said with a big grin.

"Are you a cav, then?" Dulcinea asked, making Gideon look back to her.

"Yeah, so I guess I can pick any house. Um." Cytherea had taken her arm, like they were in a gay Jane Austen book or something. "Are you guys always so friendly?"

"No," Cytherea said quietly, making Dulcinea giggle and also making Gideon's brain skitter around inside her skull wildly trying to find the "talking to pretty girls" manual which definitely did not exist.

"Cool," said Gideon. 

Smooth.

"Where were you heading, Gideon?" Dulcinea asked.

"Anywhere with food." Gideon seized this topic gratefully because food was something she could definitely talk about. "I missed lunch and I'm starving."

"There's a welcome dinner at Seventh Heaven," Cytherea said.

"That's our house's nickname," Dulcinea interjected softly, like she was explaining a movie.

"You should come," Cytherea said firmly.

"You can meet some other students," Dulcinea added.

"I guess." Gideon glanced between them again, outflanked and outmanoeuvred. "If you'll feed me, sure."

Both girls said 'yay', but while Dulcinea clapped her hands together, Cytherea just gave her arm an appreciative squeeze. Every push-up she had ever done was suddenly super-extra worth it.

Gideon stayed mostly quiet as they followed the paved paths through campus. Dulcinea and Cytherea chatted around her, mostly complimenting each other's outfits (it turned out they weren't wearing exactly the same dress, but after thirty seconds of chatter Gideon couldn't remember which one was 'mori style' and which one was 'casual fae'). Gideon didn't get the vibe that they were trying to put down her own outfit, either. It was almost like they were chatting each other up, to make each other feel prettier. 

She had never heard such a conversation before, and she let the innocent positivity of it wash over her and through her. The spring air had a warm breeze behind it that promised summer days ahead, and the sky's blue had gone completely AWOL. Now that the sun was on it's way out, reds and oranges and pinks and those friggy in between colours that would look really nice on Cytherea's lips were having a party up there. 

It had happened, Gideon realized. She really had escaped Frozen Hell and entered the promised land of Canaan University. She was so euphoric that when they came to a wide crack in the pavement and Cytherea joked that Gideon should lift her over it, she took a long step to straddle the divide and effortlessly lifted Cytherea by the waist, depositing her gently on the other side. 

Dulcinea laughed in delight as Cytherea squealed, then very sensibly took the five extra steps required to get around the pothole herself.

After that, Cytherea hugged Gideon's bicep so hard, Gideon could feel her boob smooshed against her arm. Gideon was still blushing when they took a turn around a storage warehouse and Dulcinea pointed ahead of them.

“There it is,” she said happily. “Not too far from our res building!”

“I heard all the buildings have tunnels underground connecting them,” Cytherea said. “That will be handy when the snow comes.”

Gideon was still frowning at the buildings ahead of them, trying to figure out which one was the ‘house’. One was a tall glass tower, kind of like their res. Another was one of the impractically squat gothic ones that looked like it often complained about how other towers these days didn’t appreciate the importance of a well-turned cornice. And in between those was some kind of park, or botanical garden. As they approached she noticed lights moving among the trees, though, and classical music drifted in the air. It sounded like Enya. “Do you guys live in a park?” 

“We live with you,” Cytherea reminded her.

“Seventh Heaven is behind the trees,” Dulcinea said, moving to walk ahead of them now as if to urge them to hurry up. “It’s the most beautiful house on campus, you’ll love it!”

“But - oh!” Gideon hurried her steps to follow Dulcinea (Cytherea released her grapple of Gideon’s arm but caught her hand instead). Ahead of her, what she was seeing finally resolved itself into something that made sense. There were trees, yes, and they were densely packed, but behind them was a mostly-glass wall covered in vines. The door to the house was likewise covered in greenery, and when Dulcinea pushed it open, Gideon had the distinct feeling that she was entering the kind of fairy glen where you weren’t supposed to accept favours or eat anything.

She was starving though, so nuts to that. 

The front room inside had high ceilings, higher than anything Gideon was used to in a residence. Warm lights hung from the rafters in elaborate chandeliers that looked like pretty floating bushes. The room was mostly empty of furniture, just a few low couches and chairs arranged in groups, where half a dozen other beautiful fairy students lounged and drank (beer, Gideon noticed with relief, not weird stuff). The walls were absolutely covered in artwork, and sculptures hogged most of the little round tables in the room. The floor itself was carpeted in grass, which was absolutely absurd, with little stone paths running across it. 

“This place is crazy,” she marvelled, taking it all in as Cytherea guided her towards the glass double doors on the far side of the room. They stood propped open with chairs, and brighter light and louder music poured out of them. 

“Do you like it?” Dulcinea asked, her eyes alight like a kid showing someone her favourite toy and hoping they thought it was cool. “It’s an art gallery here in front, showcasing the student’s work from previous years.”

“This is the fanciest room I’ve ever been in,” Gideon said with absolute sincerity.

“Where are you from?” Cytherea asked, and from her smile she wasn’t sure if Gideon was joking or not.

“The South Pole,” Gideon said, shrugging. “The penguins got nothing on you guys.”

They travelled down a hall - hardwood everywhere! - past a set of old stairs with a worn out patina on the treads and into the kitchen area which was, inevitably, where the real party was. The food smelled amazing and Gideon only let Cytherea introduce her to the other dozen or so people there because Dulcinea was busy making her a plate full of it. 

The other students were all her age, or close, all dressed in flowy gowns or soft poet shirts or kilts or whatever that one chick was wearing that made her look like an ambulatory flower. Maybe it was the makeup or the music or the huge plate of food that Dulcinea had just given her but Gideon had never seen so many beautiful people in person. And they weren’t just around her, they were smiling at her, speaking to her, friendly and interested. 

She wondered if Harrow got welcomed like this at the Ninth house. Harrow would have _ freaked out _ if a bunch of hot people started being nice to her. Gideon kinda wished she could have been there to see it.

"So, Gideon," said a cute boy who looked like he would need to be protected from anything scarier than a disappointed look, "are you going to apply here?"

Gideon shrugged, her mouth full of a tiny hamburger. Probably weren't supposed to eat those in one bite, but they were so small!

"Do you have any interest in the fine arts?" another girl asked. She had the biggest lips ever, but in a good way. "Not that it’s required," she added quickly, glancing at Cytherea for some reason. "But I believe that _ everybody _ is an artist. You just have to find which art calls to you." She said this last bit so earnestly, she must believe it. And the others were nodding agreement.

"I know mine. Martial arts," Gideon said, pleased to fit in, and took a slightly more modest bite of the next tiny hamburger. 

"Oh," murmured Lips Girl, evidently nonplussed. She mumbled something about sculpture with found objects while the others entered into a very pointless discussion about how much of an art ‘martial arts’ really was. None of them seemed to notice that it had 'art' right there in the name, which was enough to convince Gideon.

"It's like dancing," she said once she had handled that second tiny burger. "Full contact dancing."

Cytherea hugged her arm as this argument got sucked into the discussion and spun around. Gideon glanced down at her but she was just smiling and listening to the conversation, so Gideon focused on eating her food. It was easily the best food she had ever tasted, but she found herself paying more attention to the way Cytherea's delicate hands rested on her arm. She was careful not to jostle them, or make any movement they could be taken as pulling away. She wanted those hands there all night. She briefly imagined putting her arm around Cytherea, sliding her hand over the curve at the small of her back to rest comfortably at her waist, holding her close enough to feel the warmth of her… but she might not want that, and right now Gideon would sooner cut her arm off than pull it away.

The next hour passed in a pleasant buzz of music and conversation. Gideon mostly stayed silent, eating three plates of little party food things that Dulcinea brought her. The tiny burgers, and the little cake squares that were chocolate and yellow were her favourites. Eventually though, she did feel full, and ran out of that excuse not to speak. So she stood with an imported, hoppy-as-fuck beer in one hand and listened to all the fancy kids talk about art around her. They were like princesses. The girls and the boys, the willowy and the pleasantly plump, they all had that kind of magic around them that she had no reference for other than princesses from fairy tales, like they woke up in the morning with flowy hair and bright eyes to birds singing in their windows.

Magic hair and actual good manners. Everyone was so polite! It was bizarre but deeply thrilling to be on the receiving end of it, even if the conversation was inane and pointless otherwise. 

“Having fun?” Cytherea asked, steering Gideon away from the party and back down the hall towards the art-display foyer front room thing. 

“Everyone is super friendly,” Gideon said. “And the food is good.”

“But the party is boring?” Cytherea said with a little smile.

Gideon found herself grinning back. “You said it, not me.”

“Come with me,” Cytherea urged, releasing the grapple on Gideon’s bicep in order to pull her along by the hand instead. “I’ll show you around the house. There’s more to it than a party room.”

Gideon eagerly followed. Chytherea’s hand was so soft, like she never actually touched anything. “What kind of art do you do?” Gideon asked as they went up the dark wood stairs.

“I sing,” she said, not looking back. “Like a pretty little canary. These are the art studios,” she continued, pulling Gideon into a dimly lit hall. It was long and broad, with a high wood railing that ran along the top of the stairwell. A second set of stairs began at the far end of the hall, climbing above the first, and all along the hall were open doors that peered into large rooms full of shadows and art supplies. “But I bet you’d like to see the gym,” she added over her shoulder, giving Gideon that charming smile again.

“You guys have a gym?” The music was quieter here, muted by distance. It seemed like everyone in the house was downstairs at the party. 

“Every house has a gym,” Cytherea said, “because every house has sexy Cavaliers that need to work out their big strong muscles. Well, except the ninth house. But who cares about them, right?”

“What do you mean?” Gideon frowned as they started up towards the third floor. “Don’t they have one?”

“Well I mean they have _ one _. But Ortus shouldn’t really count. There’s no way he’ll graduate with honours. I think the ninth are just going to have to build their own cav and ignore him. That must be their plan since they don’t make an effort to recruit anyone.”

“Hah, yeah,” Gideon said, a little worm of uncertainty suddenly in her gut. “With their robot powers. They’d want to win those meets, right? For uh, bragging rights?”

“And money,” Cytherea said. “Resources. The houses are run by and for the students, but it’s their job to support the Cavaliers in their training. So if they do a good job, and their cavs win, they get more money and resources. It makes for a bit of a vicious circle, though, when you never win. Then,” she said, pushing open a set of double doors into a huge, well-lit room, “you can’t afford things like - oh, hey Protesilaus.” Her voice turned a bit sour in disappointment as they spotted a young man working out in the gym.

Gideon, however, lit up like it was pancake day. “This gym is awesome,” she said, her eyes glued to the absurdly muscular dude peeling himself off a weight bench. She wanted to fight him. Bunches of punches. He looked like he was made of medicine balls. And, yes, there it was, he spoke like he was trying out for a Shakespeare play.

“Cytherea,” Protesilaus boomed, rising up to his feet. “I thought you would be at the party.”

“You know this guy?” Gideon asked, wondering if she could arrange a little bitty sparring match.

“He’s Dulcinea’s older brother,” Cytherea said with some asperity. 

Gideon nodded, not sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing, vis-a-vis sparring. “Cool.”

“I was just showing Gideon around, Pro,” Cytherea said as he and his twelve hundred and five muscles came over. “You should tell her about the facilities here. You’d be able to show them off better than I would.”

“Well,” Protesilaus said, propping his hands on his hips and surveying the huge, well lit, impeccably furnished workout space. “There’s some machines over there, and the heavy stuff’s in that area, and the punching and kicking things are in that far corner.”

“I like punching and kicking things,” Gideon said quickly.

He barked a laugh. “So I heard!”

“You did?”

Protesilaus waved her over towards the sparring ring, though, so she followed eagerly. “I’m not surprised Cytherea is trying to snap you up, if the rumours are true,” he continued.

“What rumours?” she asked, and that annoying little worm in her gut was back.

“A word to the wise,” he said more quietly, “there’s less than a thousand people enrolled here. Everything gets around. The students have a message board that they use almost exclusively for gossiping about the cavs.”

“And the cavs have a message board that they never use at all,” Cytherea said from behind them, her tone dry.

“Why would they be gossiping about me?” Gideon wondered.

“Did you tell Isaac that you beat Lee’s fourth edition trainer?” Protesilaus asked.

“Well, I told Jeannemary that, yeah,” Gideon frowned. “I wasn’t trying to brag, though, the trainer’s obviously not that great.”

“Would you care to spar against a real person?” he asked brightly.

“Fuck yeah,” she said, her hands coming up like they were going to grab this opportunity themselves. 

“Then,” Protesilaus said, raising a hand towards the fighting ring, “Let not your courage fail you; be valiant, stout and bold! And let’s have a match.”


	6. Who Wants a Piece?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Make new friends and fight with them.

Protesilaus waved towards the gear rack as Cytherea went to take a seat on a little bench nearby. “Choose your match. Kickboxing, wrestling, swords, staffs -”

“No school like the old school,” Gideon said, selecting a familiar looking two-handed practice sword. She activated it and it lit up in her hands just like the ones back at the Pole did. “To the death?” she suggested brightly, setting her shades on the sword rack for safety.

“First blood,” he countered. “The pads are annoying to adjust and it’s already late. We can use the second grade rules - torso and arm strikes, no kicks or grabs. Fair?”

“Fair,” she agreed. The swords could detect contact but you needed special pads for the lethality feedback, and protective gear for other strikes. She glanced over at Cytherea who now had a little tablet out (did her skirt have pockets?) and waved. “You gonna ref for us, Princess?”

She nodded, setting the tablet on her knee, and looked up at them. “Call out, then, when you’re ready! Pro?”

“Tis’ nobly done, the day’s our own!” he called back, saluting with his longsword. “Protesilaus awaits you!”

Gideon couldn’t help it. She really liked this guy.

“Gideon?” Cytherea called.

She raised her own sword, her eyes on her opponent. “Gideon Nav! And I’m all outta gum.”

“To first blood!” Cytherea called, a smile audible in her voice. “Begin!”

Gideon’s world narrowed to the two of them. She circled right, her weight centred, the balance of her sword perfect in her hand as she watched Protesilaus. He circled the same way, his eyes wary though held his blade with confidence. She closed the distance first, a quick scythe of her blade testing his defences. He blocked it, the contact sending a pleasant jolt through her arms in a way that was infinitely more satisfying than the false feedback of the pad in a virtual dual. He deflected her blow, then swung back in a shallow slash, the movement languid, easy to predict. 

Gideon jumped back, arms up just enough to dodge his counter, and the tip of his sword made two distinct  _ thp _ sounds as it hit both sides of her open leather jacket. The perfect mix of adrenaline and oxygen was coursing through her now, and she felt weightless. Her blade was weightless. She was already bringing it down with a twist of her wrists, 

and the padded blade cracked off of his clavicle,

and her feet hit the floor. She slid them back into the ready stance as the buzzer sounded from both swords. 

Protesilaus blinked, visibly checking his follow up strike, and Cytherea belatedly called out “Match to Gideon!”

“Did you hit me in midair?” he asked, baffled, rubbing his shoulder.

“Can we go again?” she blurted, adrenaline still singing in her veins. 

“Well, I should think so!” he agreed immediately. 

They fought twice more before Gideon got hot enough to take off her jacket. 

Time passed without either of the fighters noticing. Gideon won the second and third sword matches, though not as quickly as that first match. Protesilaus had a solid defence and kept her at bay longer each time, but couldn’t get past her lightning strikes. They donned protective gear and sparred next, and here he had a slightly bigger reach advantage that helped neutralize her speed. When they switched to staff fighting, Gideon was aware that some of Cytherea’s friends had come in to sit with her on the bench and watch, but she didn’t much care. The fairy princess kids of Seventh House didn’t bother her, and no one interfered with the most epic weapons practice session she had ever had, ever, so they were all okay in her book. 

It was Protesilaus himself who finally called an end to their practice. He and his twelve thousand muscles were drenched in sweat, and Gideon realized belatedly that her hair was stuck to her forehead and her shirt plastered to her own skin. 

“Well met, and well fought,” he proclaimed, offering her a meaty hand to shake. 

“That was the most fun I have ever had,” she told him through a grin, and her grip was just as crushing as his. “Can we do it again soon? You need to show me how you did the spinny thing with the stick, at the end of the last match. I thought I knew where the end was but then suddenly, woah hey, it was cracking off my head.”

“It would be my honour to trounce you with a staff once more.” His face was flushed with joy and exertion like her own no doubt was, though exhaustion marked the edges of his eyes. He probably hadn’t had a nap like she had, Gideon figured. 

“You won’t catch me like that again,” she warned him, and stepped away, trying to reproduce the elbow-bend, wrist-spin combination that had surprised her against an imaginary opponent in the air. She’d get it eventually, she knew. She just needed to figure it out.

“You were great, Pro!” 

Gideon recognized the voice as Dulcinea’s and looked up, registering individual faces in the crowd for the first time. Most of the kids she had met at the party were chatting and leaving now that the sparring match was over, but Dulcinea was sitting next to Cytherea, and on her other side was Palamedes. Holding her  _ hand _ . It was so cute. His expression was guarded as he nodded hello, like he expected her to tease him. 

She took a breath, intending to tease him, but a quiet sound from the sword rack filtered through to her lizard brain and she glanced over to spot Camilla watching her. Gideon cleared her throat. “Hey guys. What’re you doing here?”

“We came to see the show,” Camilla said dryly.

Gideon, ever obliging, raised her arms and flexed at her. “The gun show?” Camilla rolled her eyes, her expression thoroughly unimpressed, which was the reaction Gideon usually got when she did that. “D’you want to spar too?” she asked hopefully.

“Tomorrow,” Camilla promised. “It’s late.”

“Is it?” Gideon looked back at the students on the bench, as if they could confirm this vile rumour. 

Cytherea was just putting away her little tablet, a bright smile on her face. “That was  _ amazing, _ ” she said. “Both of you. I can’t believe you’re a first year, Gideon! There aren’t a lot of cavs who can go toe-to-toe with Protesilaus for long.”

“You’re very fast,” Protesilaus agreed, towelling himself off. “But some of your techniques are a bit formulaic.”

“Yeah, I gotta practise with real people more,” Gideon agreed, unbothered. She knew she was good. She intended to become super-duper fucking awesome. 

“Everyone’s very impressed with both of you,” Cytherea assured her.

“Everyone who?” Gideon moved to put her gear back on the racks, and stole a towel of her own. She should have brought a change of shirt, she thought. She was getting cool now as the sweat dried.

“I posted the first few fights, with the swords,” Cytherea said. “All the students can see. And they’re all saying very nice things about you, Gideon!”

Gideon stared at her. Everyone had seen her sweet victories? And were being complimentary? That sounded like a trap. “You’ve got bandwidth for video uploads?” she said instead.

It was Palamedes who answered. “You’ll find there’s unlimited bandwidth in the houses and the residences.”

“Fancy,” Gideon said, her brain still hyperventilating into a paper bag over the idea of a whole school full of people being impressed with something she did. 

Dulcinea smiled up at her from the bench where she still sat holding Palamedes’ hand. “I think more people are going to be inviting you to their houses, tomorrow,” she predicted. 

She clearly meant for it to be encouraging, but Gideon just felt that same worm of doubt as before. “Cool,” she said, grabbing her jacket and slipping her shades in the inner pocket. “I should go.”

“I’ll walk you home,” Cytherea said immediately, jumping to her feet. 

“We should all head back,” Camilla said firmly. Palamedes and Dulcinea agreed in their quiet, nerdy way, rising with their hands still linked, and Gideon kept a double-armed hold on her jacket to protect her own arms and hands from Cytherea’s soft little fingers as they all headed out. 

Gideon was quiet as they made their way back along the paths. The sky was pitch dark outside, aside from the soft glow of smog in the distance over the city centre, and the only illumination came from dim overhead lamps, set far enough apart that the pools of their light did not entirely cover the winding paths. 

Palamedes and Dulcinea chatted softly about courses or poems or whatever. Camilla followed behind like a prowling lynx, and Cytherea walked beside Gideon in the front, as silent as Gideon. As they came around the corner and spotted their res, though, she looked up sidelong at Gideon. “You’re quiet now,” she noted, and reached out to gently touch Gideon’s arm. “Are you tired from your fights?”

Gideon didn’t mean to say anything. Maybe she opened her mouth to agree with that excuse. But she made the mistake of looking into Cytherea’s eyes before she answered, and the true reason for her silence was hauled out of her. “Are you still gonna be this friendly after I sign up as a cav? Even if I sign up at a different house?”

“Gideon,” Cytherea said quietly, understanding now dawning in her eyes, “no matter what you do, I would still very much like to be  _ friendly  _ with you.” 

The way she said the word sent blood rushing back up Gideon’s neck and cheeks and she jerked her eyes back to the path. “Cool,” she murmured. 

But she kept her grip on her jacket all the way home, just the same.

***

Gideon couldn’t sleep.

She lay on her back, staring at the ceiling that was a foot too high, laying on a bed that was a bit too soft, under blankets that were slightly too warm. She was goddamn Goldilocks up in this business and nothing was quite right.

The evening had ended well. Cytherea could take a hint like Gideon could take a hit, and had refrained from touching her after their awkward back and forth at the end of their walk. Everyone had said their goodbyes and goodnights. Gideon had showered and changed (it hadn’t occurred to her to buy pyjamas so she just had boxers and a T-shirt on), had a tall glass of water, and gone to bed. It should have been easy to sleep but nooo, her ears had to keep hearing weird noises like the building settling and planes flying to and from the nearby airport. She had to keep noticing that the wall was on the wrong side of the bed, or that the room was too warm, or whatever. 

This was why taking a three hour nap in the afternoon was a stupid idea, she realized glumly. 

Around two in the morning she rolled out of bed, giving up. She padded into the kitchen in sock feet - neon striped fuzzy socks - and got herself another glass of water. As she leaned her back against the counter, she noticed a thread of light still on under Harrow’s door. 

Gideon’s mood immediately lifted. She’d feel way better if she could annoy Harrow! That would be a welcome bit of familiarity, and then surely she could sleep. She shuffled over to the door and rapped her knuckles on it.

The silence that came from the door was deafening.

Gideon grinned. “Delivery,” she called.

She heard the desk chair creak as Harrow shifted her weight. “Go away, Griddle.”

“Candygram,” Gideon said, knocking softly again.

Again with the annoyed silence. It was delicious.

Gideon knocked. “Killer shark.”

“I’m not opening the door,” Harrow answered curtly, her voice muffled.

“You don’t have to, I can annoy you right through it,” Gideon pointed out.

“What do you  _ want, _ Nav?”

“I can’t sleep,” Gideon said. “Tell me a story.”

“No.”

“Harrow, that is very selfish of you,” Gideon chided her. “I know you have books in there.”

“I’m putting in earplugs now,” Harrow said. “I am ignoring you. Go away.”

Gideon heaved a sigh and went back to the sink, sipping her water. She felt a bit better. She washed off her cup, set it in the drying rack, and went back to her room, figuring she’d try to sleep again. The sight of her messed up bed was dispiriting, though. She lay on the floor instead, tucked her toes under the edge of her desk, and started doing slow sit ups. 

Around two hundred and fifty, her ears registered a door opening in the apartment, and she paused, her chest at a forty-five degree angle from the floor. She heard another door click softly, and the quiet hum of the bathroom fan beside her room. 

Harrow had left her bedroom.

Gideon scrambled to her feet, as quietly as she could, and slipped back into the main room. She snuck past the closed bathroom door and tiptoed over to Harrow’s room, wondering if she could get in and - well the number of things she could screw up in thirty seconds was pretty epic. 

But no, the damn door was locked. Paranoid little vulture-faced jerk. Who locked their door when they got up to pee? And how was she supposed to flip Harrow’s mattress upside down when she couldn’t get in the room?

Gideon brightened as inspiration struck. 

A moment later, the door to the bathroom opened, the light briefly illuminating the living room floor as Harrow stepped out of it. And stopped. 

“What.” Harrow’s voice was cold and annoyed.

Gideon didn’t look up. She was doing pushups in front of Harrow’s door. “Thirty four, thirty five,” she counted slowly.

Harrow hesitated, but took a few steps closer, taking the bait. “Griddle, what are you doing?” Her voice was a low hiss. Probably didn’t want to wake up their roommates and embarrass herself. 

“Exercises,” Gideon grunted. “I can’t sleep.”

“I can’t get in my room with you in front of the door, Griddle,” Harrow said, “which you are well aware of. Get out of my way.”

Gideon paused with her arms fully extended, resting for a second as she finally looked up. Harrow’s pinched expression of extreme annoyance made her smile, and she blew a stray chunk of bangs from her eyes before answering. “But I like being in your way.”

Harrow closed her eyes, letting out the low, slow breath that Gideon assumed was her counting-to-ten equivalent as she fought back the urge to do something stupid like climb over Gideon or kick her in the face. “Once upon a time,” she eventually said.

“Oh my god, what?” Gideon laughed, falling back to the floor.

“Once upon a  _ time, _ ” Harrow insisted, as if her words were cutting tools, “there was a sphinx.”

“What, like in the desert?” Gideon pushed herself up to sit back on her heels, kneeling in front of Harrow’s door as she watched this great new bullshit.

“The sphinx,” Harrow continued doggedly, “was responsible for guarding a door.”

“Oooh.”

“And it would only let people  _ pass _ if they answered a  _ riddle _ . Tell me what you want, Griddle, and then let me by.”

Gideon blinked at Harrow, not sure what to make of this weird new game. “Uh. Okay. Here’s a riddle for you…” and then the worm from her gut wiggled out from her mouth and she said “How can you tell if someone likes you or if they’re just using you?”

They stared at each other, both of them startled at the honest question.

“How would I know that?” Harrow asked, but Gideon could tell she was just stalling for time.

“You’re evil,” Gideon pointed out. “You should know evil people tricks.”

Harrow scowled at her. “Who do you think is using you?” There was an edge to her voice, beyond annoyance now. She sounded uncertain, or maybe suspicious.

“So uh. Did you see the video Cytherea posted on the student boards?”

“Yes,” Harrow answered quietly. “I saw you fight.”

“Yeah! I was pretty awesome, right?” Gideon grinned.

“Yes,” Harrow said, almost whispering.

“What the fuck,” Gideon laughed, weirded out again. Harrow was so weird. So goddamn strange. “Okay, whatever. Look, it’s just, the houses try to get good cavs and - I dunno,” Gideon shrugged. This had been a mistake. Harrow was throwing her off. She was supposed to be annoying her, dammit, not getting one-word compliments. “So how do you know?” she asked again, returning to her original question. 

“You won’t,” Harrow said seriously, “until you pick a house. Then, if people from other houses are no longer friendly, they were just trying to recruit you. If they still are, then they may wish to actually attempt to be your friend, though such people are doubtlessly foolish deviants and should be avoided.”

Gideon ignore the last bit. “What about people from the house I’m in? What if they’re just being nice to their own cav?”

Harrow raised her hands in claws, looking up at the sky as if to implore it why it had chosen to inflict Gideon upon her as a roommate. “I guess you’ll never know for them, Griddle. But you’ll have to choose a house eventually, and by eventually I mean Friday at five pm, and you won’t be able to train in the school facilities until you do, so figure out whose good opinion you want to be absolutely sure of and then join someone else’s house. Alright?”

“Uh. Kay.” Gideon stared at Harrow, waiting for the other shoe to drop, and hit her on the head. Harrow never answered questions that clearly. And she certainly didn’t impart information without an insult. Unless she wanted something.

Oh.

“Okay, that’s actually a half decent answer,” Gideon admitted, and rocked up to her feet. “You may pass, Tiny Queen of Frozen Robots.” And she stepped back, bowing and gesturing to the door.

“Don’t call me shit like that,” Harrow muttered as she flicked her card over the reader, unlocking the door with a soft click.

“Pff, why not?” Gideon challenged as Harrow jerked open her door.

“Because I like it,” Harrow shot back, and shut the door in Gideon’s face.


	7. Very Illegal Plans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ninth House Business.

Maybe it was waking up in her own room, bathed in the smiles of the ripped battle babes on her wall. Maybe it was waking up seven thousand kilometres away from Dr. Satan Nonagesimus and her husband. Whatever it was, Gideon was absolutely stoked as she set out at a jog along the paved path, breathing deeply of air that didn't kill her immediately by freezing her bronchioles solid. 

Her nanosword was a hard, heavy lump in the fanny pack, a reassuring pressure against the small of her back as she ran, ostensibly for fitness reasons. She jogged over paths, over grass, between buildings. She found a series of small hedges and enjoyed an impromptu hurdle session. She only fell once, out of eleven bushes, so she considered that a win. 

What Gideon was looking for was an out of the way place to practise with her sword, where no one would see her. And since there were security cameras pretty much all over this place, it meant she really had to explore. Registraria the Regularatrix probably wouldn't approve of illegally imported weapons. 

It was Friday morning, and Gideon's third day at Canaan. Thursday had been amazing. She hadn’t seen Harrow at all, for one thing, and she had sparred with Pro  _ and  _ Camilla. The Sixth House reminded her of a clinic, but one where the staff were all up after hours for a party. Camilla was a goddamn beast in two handed fighting, and Gideon had been super tempted to apply to Sixth just to learn how to fight with two swords from Camilla. But they were all nurses and doctors and kept wanting to poke Gideon and monitor her vitals while she fought, which was kind of off-putting. 

Thursday afternoon she had discovered that her personal map of campus only had buildings labelled if she had access to them, or if she had been in them already, which was weird. So she had run all around campus after supper trying to get into random buildings. Some were unlocked and welcoming, like the library. All students could go there. Some were unlocked and unwelcoming, like the admin building. And a few were locked and hostile the same way a clerk in a store that closed in three minutes was hostile when you walked in to browse. They wanted to kill you for your audacity but the law prohibited violence.  Those were the fun ones, even though the names were indecipherable garbage like MLT202 and CRZ-LMQ. 

Today she was circling around behind a locked warehouse (RSD25) to find the empty space behind it where the building didn't meet the campus security wall. She had noticed it last night and thought that it looked like a promising spot to practice with her sword. This morning, however, the space wasn't empty.

It contained one (1) Harrowhark Nonagesimus.

They both froze as they saw each other. “Harrow?” Gideon blurted, incredulous. For a split second her heart seized, sure that Harrow had somehow found out about her Very Illegal Plans and was going to rat her out. But Harrow had a panicked look on her face, not a victorious sneer. Plus she was wearing practical clothes, black leggings and tunic, like she used to back at the lab. It was a working outfit, not a gloating outfit. 

“Griddle, what are you doing here?” Harrow hissed, and Gideon wondered if there were sleeping roommates in the bushes that she didn’t want to wake up. “Did you follow me?”

“Maybe,” Gideon hedged, though from the scowl on Harrow’s face she didn’t believe her for an instant, so she abandoned that one. “Maybe I’m just out for a jog. What are  _ you _ doing here?” 

Harrow’s gaze flicked away, surly and guilty, and Gideon gave a little gasp of joy.

“Nonagesimus, are you  _ breaking a rule _ ?” 

“Shut up! This doesn’t concern you, Nav, get out of here,” Harrow ordered, pointing imperiously back the way she had come.

But Gideon was no longer one to be ordered. She stepped closer instead, and as she approached she spotted the bag on the ground, propped near the locked rear door. Harrow tried to stand in front of it, a clear sign of guilt in Gideon’s mind. “What are you  _ doing _ ? Are you spying on this poor building?”

“This is Ninth House business, not yours,” Harrow said, her voice low, her face blotchy under the pale makeup. 

“Are you  _ breaking in _ to this poor building?” Gideon was elated. Perfect, proper Harrow was breakin’ da law and the semester hadn’t even started yet. 

“Gideon,” Harrow closed her eyes and for a second, Gideon swore that she was trying not to cry. “Please just go away.”

“Uh.” Gideon stared at her. The brutal double-combo of using her real name (a first) and saying please (also a first, if meant sincerely) caught her off guard. “Dude. Harrow. Relax, I’m not gonna rat you out.”

“I know that,” Harrow snapped, irritated again. She glared at Gideon from under her perfectly pencilled brows. “I don’t want you to get involved in this. There’s a lot at stake and you could be  _ expelled _ , Nav.”

“Well, then, so could you,” Gideon reasoned. “So it must be important, right? Is it about robots? You like robots, right?”

“Yes,” Harrow ground out through her teeth. “It’s about robots and has nothing to do with you, so leave. You’re wasting my time and putting us both at risk!”

Gideon glanced over her shoulder, but no one was coming. “Are we on camera here?” 

“No,” Harrow said.

Gideon believed her. “You want me to open that door for you?”

“It’s locked, not stuck,” Harrow answered, doubtless hoping that Gideon would get bored and leave.

“Yeah, but I mean,” Gideon grinned the reckless, shit-eating grin that always preceded her doing something incredibly stupid, and she pulled out her nanosword. “I got a key!”

Harrow stared at her incredulously. “You  _ brought that _ ?” 

“Hell yeah!”

“You can’t import those into Mainland,” Harrow spluttered. 

“You totally can! You just gotta hide it in a boot,” Gideon assured her. 

“Griddle,” Harrow looked pained again. “You’re going to get yourself killed. Or worse, arrested.”

“We’re wastin’ time, Hermione Danger. Move over.”

Harrow hesitated for an instant, agonizing, but then abruptly made a decision. “If you’re coming in with me, you have to  _ swear _ you’ll do what I say. This is a delicate operation.”

“I don’t have the best track record for obedience,” Gideon reminded her.

“Swear it. Or I’m leaving now and you’ll always wonder what I wanted in here.”

“Fuck, fine!” Gideon snapped her sword alight, amused at how Harrow flinched at the loud  _ crack _ . She brought it up vertical in front of her in a salute. “I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.”

“Gideon!”

“You really do know my name! Yes, alright! I vow to obey you utterly until we’re safe again, alright? You are my dread sovereign, High Warlock of the Aurora Australis, now show me on the door where the bad robot touched you.”

“Here.” Harrow traced her finger on the door, a half circle around the handle. “Remove this part.” She was all business now, and Gideon’s adrenaline was running around her brain and turning off all the ‘maybe we should be responsible’ switches. Harrow wanted a door de-handled? Gideon was gonna de-handle that shit with extreme prejudice. 

The air crackled and hissed as her blade cleaved molecules into their component parts. A few short thrusts left no visible mark on the door, but the odour of miscellaneous metals and volatile organic compounds wafted past them. Gideon carefully collapsed the sword and gave the handle a quick jab with her left fist. 

A half moon section of the door fell into the building and clattered to the ground inside with a hollow sound. 

“You’re not gonna be able to lock it again,” Gideon pointed out, but Harrow was already pushing past her to open the door.

“This will work to our advantage,” Harrow muttered, flicking a switch inside on the wall, and tapping numbers into a keypad beside it. She was wearing thin gloves, the soft cloth kind the robotics techs used. “They’ll suspect military involvement, or another agency. Students don’t have nanotech blades.”

“I do,” Gideon said brightly, following her inside. 

“Make sure absolutely  _ no one else knows that _ ,” Harrow hissed. There was a beep from the keypad, and the dark interior of the building lit up with a series of low snapping sounds as one overhead light after another flicked on. 

They were inside a huge warehouse. The ceiling looked to be three stories high, and the floor was scuffed linoleum. The walls were concrete with steel framing to hold all the criss-crossed wires, but no drywall or decorations. Most of the space was filled with big steel shelving bolted to two-by-four risers, and filled with lots and lots of boxes.

“Are we not gonna get spotted, like, thirty seconds ago?” Gideon asked, pointing to a security camera mounted on the wall. 

“Ortus deactivated them,” Harrow said, moving through the warehouse like she knew where she was going and definitely intended to murder someone when she got there. “We have a limited window without surveillance.”

“Isn’t he your cav?” Gideon asked, following half a step behind. She kept glancing over her shoulder, convinced someone was going to sneak up on them, but they seemed to be the only living things in the place.

“Technically, yes,” Harrow said. “But he has no intention of finishing the program. He has other goals.”

“So he’s like a student,” Gideon said.

“Sure.”

“A student with cav-passing privilege.”

“Shut up, Nav.” Harrow was scanning the small labels on the ends of the rows as they went, like she was looking for the right bookshelf in a library. Except instead of the Dewey Decimal System it was Dewey Wrote In Sharpie on Some Packing Tape System. “Here,” she said, leading Gideon into a narrow aisle against the outside wall of the warehouse. “Come make yourself useful.” She pulled her bag around in front of her and fished out a second pair of gloves, handing them to Gideon.

“I look like an anime character,” Gideon muttered, but pulled them on. Nothing like lab gloves with a cropped tank top for that high fashion look. “What do you need?”

“Get that box down,” Harrow pointed at a box that had once held a microwave (1200 mW! Rotating plate! Self-cleaning RealGlass™ interior!), sitting on a shelf above her head.

Gideon went to tip-toe, easing it down and manhandling it to the ground. “How were you gonna get this down on your own?” she asked in exasperation, taking the short-bladed box-cutter that Harrow handed her.

“You’ll always wonder,” Harrow said. “Open it up.”

Gideon slit along the packing tape that sealed the top and pulled the plastic box flaps open. Inside was a sleek steel shape that looked familiar but was impossible to place. “This is not a microwave,” she pointed out.

Harrow knelt beside her, opening her backpack up wider. “It’s part of an old robot.” She pulled out a multi-headed tool and started prying open the silvered casing of the round chunk of robot. 

Gideon realized she was looking at it upside down, and it was the upper torso of one of the bipedal units. “Um.”

Harrow slit along the seam of the case and pulled the two halves apart, revealing a lot of circuits and wires and nasty robot innards inside. She flicked the prying tool like it was a butterfly knife and suddenly it was scissors, and she was performing emergency robot surgery on this poor microwave. “Get the silver bag out of my backpack.”

“Yes, Doctor,” Gideon said, reaching over the hunched-up Harrow to fish out the metallic bag from the black canvas backpack. She held it open, recognizing it as one of those anti-static bags you get RAM in, and a moment later Harrow carefully lowered a circuit board with a bigass processor on it into the bag. 

Harrow had just stowed her tools and the booty in her sack when they both froze at a sudden, familiar sound. Somewhere in the warehouse,  _ something _ had just booted up. 

An electric motor ground to life, and hard tires rolled slowly along the floor towards them. 

“Climb,” Gideon snapped at the wide-eyed Harrow. She nodded and began frantically climbing the metal shelves as Gideon turned to peer back down the aisle, drawing her sword. Except that she couldn’t fucking extend it because there was no damn room. If she started swinging it she’d shear through the shelves on both sides and they’d fall and crush Harrow’s tiny bird bones. 

“You have to kill it,” Harrow said urgently, already well above her. “We need to wipe its memory.”

“Cool,” Gideon acknowledged, and with a bellowed “South Pole, Represent!” she charged down the aisle towards whatever machine awaited. 

An instant before she reached the clear centre aisle, the light between the shelves was eclipsed by a slow-rolling storage unit. It was as big as a horse, with four thick, jointed legs that ended in wheels, four crab-like pincer arms on top of its back, and a front fork-lift unit that could double as hydraulic pincers. 

If it had been facing her she would have been in deep shit, but the unit hadn’t turned yet. She leapt, planting her free hand on top of its low truck-front head, and did a one-armed handspring over it. She twisted in the air, aiming to land on her feet facing it in the clear space beyond the shelves. 

She would have made it, too, if the nearest crab hand hadn’t grabbed her forearm. 

The momentum of her fall swung her in a tight arc and she slammed into the side of the machine, all the air leaving her lungs in a loud bark of a yell. She barely kept a grip on her sword. Her left arm was on fire and shooting pain ran through her shoulder and her back as the crab arm dragged her slowly up towards the top of the machine. 

Gideon scrambled to get some purchase with her heels but she was already off the ground and couldn’t hook her foot on anything. It pulled her up over the side (scratching the shit out of her back, why wasn’t she wearing her damn leather jacket) which arced her backwards, letting her suck in a breath. Harrow was yelling something at her. Her captured left arm wasn’t  _ working _ so she focused on her good hand, and flipped the grip of the sword in her palm. She slammed the crossguard against the machine and squeezed the trigger.

For a second nothing seemed to happen as the implacable crab arm pulled her up onto the top of the machine. But as the sword guard dragged along the outside, the sword blade was fully extended and slicing through the inner workings of the unit like a hot knife through butter. There was a pop and a crackle of electricity as twelve different warning beeps and messages all sounded together. The machine died.

Gideon’s very broken arm, however, was still firmly crushed in the pincer. She drew a ragged breath. “ _ FUCK.” _

“Gideon!” Harrow yelled.

“Give me a fucking  _ second! _ ” Gideon slowly, carefully raised her sword. She was holding it blade down in one hand, which was absolutely not how she was supposed to hold it, and if it touched any part of her then she would lose that part. Short, fast breaths out, through her teeth. Adrenaline helped mute the pain. She brought her good arm around in a slow, wide circle, focusing her tunnel-vision on the metal clamp around her wrist. Her hand shook. Her blade was a poison snail, crawling nearer to her arm. Didn’t want to get that shit on you. It slid along the metal crab arm. Smooth and slow, over and through it. There was a quiet clink as the clamp, still attached to her arm, gave way and came free from the dead storage machine. 

Gideon collapsed the sword. 

“Gideon,” Harrow’s frantic voice was beside her now. Somehow.

“Just… need a second,” Gideon managed, not entirely sure what was going on anymore. She needed to move, though. 

“Hold still,” Harrow snapped. 

Okay, so, no moving, Gideon thought. Then the pain in her arm flared brutally and she screamed, her limited attention entirely focused on holding her injured ass still. 

She heard the whir of a tiny machine, the screech of cutting metal and the smell of burning. There were pins and needles in her arm that, later, she would realize were tiny sparks hitting her bare skin and burning a delicate constellation into it. The clamp released and fell aside with a clatter, and some of the pain eased, letting her draw breath again.

Gideon opened her eyes and looked around. 

Harrow was perched like a vulture beside her, up on top of the dead storage beast. She was shoving some kind of grinder-saw back into her bag and pulling out a first aid kit. This bitch was prepared as fuck, Gideon marvelled. “Were you a boy scout?” 

“Hold still,” Harrow snapped again, spraying something cold all over her mangled arm. And then there was blessed icy numbness that spread from the wound, killing all sensation.

“Is that your heart medication?” Gideon asked with a stupid grin, real fuckin’ proud of that one. But she held still as Harrow bandaged her arm, using the multi-tool as a splint. 

“Idiot,” Harrow hissed, stowing the bandage roll back into her bag. “Can you walk?”

“I mean, probably.” Her legs were okay, after all. She sat up with a wince, then paused as Harrow sprayed her back, too. “Is it bad?”

“...It’s fixable,” Harrow answered after a moment, her voice tight. “Be careful when you get down.”

Gideon mumbled an ‘okay’ and turned on her bum, scooting forward to climb down awkwardly, using the half-raised fork-lift as a step. Harrow waited until she was down, then stood up and sprayed something that smelled absolutely foul all over the machine’s top. 

“Is that ammonia?” Gideon coughed, moving away. Her waistband was sticky along her back where blood had run into it. 

“You got blood everywhere,” Harrow answered shortly. “They’d know it was you if I didn’t spray it down.”

“Sorry,” Gideon muttered, feeling like that was a little unfair. She hadn’t bled all over everything on purpose. “Oh, shit. Hang on, where’d my sword go?”

“I’ve got it,” Harrow said, and jumped down to spray some more of that nasty shit on the floor. “Let me use it for one second.”

“Watch your thumbs,” Gideon said with a frown, but Harrow seemed to know what she was doing, as always. She watched as Harrow extended the blade and carefully waved it through the middle-back part of the machine, then around to the front. 

“There,” Harrow huffed, collapsing the blade again. “They won’t be getting any data out of its sensors now. Turn around.”

“What?” Gideon turned, though, and blinked in surprise as she felt Harrow opening her fanny pack. The familiar weight of the nanosword fell into it a moment later, and the zipper shut. “I could have done that,” she complained.

“It’s easier with two hands. Come on, it’s time to go,” Harrow said, leading her back towards the door. “We need to get through the tunnels before the system’s back on.”

“But,” Gideon wondered, following obediently, “where are we gonna go?”

Harrow looked over her shoulder at Gideon, her expression grim. “My room.”


	8. Harrow's Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They're in Harrow's Room.

The walk back to their res was a nightmare maze through narrow, pitch black tunnels. Harrow had a flashlight but the beam was thin and blue and it left creepy shadows dancing at the edge of the light. Harrow seemed to know where she was going, her soft-soled shoes quiet on the concrete floor as she led Gideon past supply closets, through branching paths, and around abandoned debris like piles of garbage and tangled bikes. 

"I thought these tunnels were for students to use in the winter," Gideon muttered, trying to ignore how the spray anaesthetic was already wearing off in her back. 

"Some tunnels are," Harrow replied just as quietly. "These aren't for students though."

Gideon followed half a pace behind Harrow, her fingers twitching, wanting to be holding a weapon. Harrow finally opened a door that had been wedged open, holding it for Gideon and letting it latch behind her. She tucked the wedge in her pocket and led the way up a narrow ugly staircase. After way too many stairs, she shouldered open a fire door that had also been wedged open. 

Gideon blinked, recognizing the third floor of their res. "Oh, hey. We're home."

Harrow shushed her, scooping up the second wedge and scuttling over to 3A. She shooed Gideon into their apartment but didn't relax, even after the door locked itself behind her. "In here," she said shortly, and waved her card to open her bedroom door.

"Uh." Gideon followed but hesitated in the doorway, looking around. "I can go to my room," she offered, feeling unaccountably awkward. Harrow's room should be broken or snuck into, not invited into. 

"If I wanted you in your room, Nav, that's where you would be," Harrow said crisply, already unloading her gear onto her desk. "Sit on the edge of the bed and don't bleed on anything."

Gideon shuffled over, staring around. She thought she had personalized her room but that was nothing on what Harrow had managed in two days. Her walls were covered in an eclectic mix of deathcore posters (Gideon recognized one band, Uberdeath, as the one she had listened to when she asked her tablet for 'angry music') and robotic circuit diagrams. Her closet mirror had been covered as well - which made sense, since Harrow probably didn't cast a reflection anyway - and poofy black dresses were crammed into the closet itself. There were, Gideon counted slowly, twelve pairs of shoes lined up against the wall. Her bed had a purple crinoline that peeked out from under the black bedskirt. Gideon knew Harrow was trying to fit in but this seemed excessive.

"What's with all the goth stuff?" Gideon asked, her eyes trailing to a jewellery rack dripping with silver bones and gemmed skulls. 

"Aesthetic," Harrow answered shortly. "I will be right back. Don't touch _ anything. _" 

"Okay, relax," Gideon grumbled, watching as Harrow stalked back out of the room. The door closed.

Grimacing in pain, Gideon lunged to her feet and squatted by the shoes, quickly mixing up every pair with another pair. She barely made it back to the bed when the door opened again.

"Nav!" Harrow stared at her suspiciously, but Camilla was hot on her heels. "Stay still."

"Yes, my Sepulchral Liege. Hey, Cam." Gideon greeted Camilla with a wary look as she moved to the side of the bed and set down a white box with a handle on it. It also had a big red plus sign on it. Neat.

"Harrow said you fell down the stairs," Camilla said with evident skepticism. "Let me see your back?"

Gideon shifted sideways. "Those fuckin' stairs came out of nowhere. Ow! Dude!"

"You've got grit in these lacerations," Cam said, all business now. "I'll have to clean them."

"Isn't the broken arm more of a concern?" Gideon complained, feeling a bit ganged up on as Harrow glared at her from the corner of the room, her skinny arms crossed tightly across her chest.

"Gosh, it sure is," Cam snapped. 

There was a quiet knock on the door, like someone was trying to kick it, but politely. Harrow opened it to admit Dr. 69.

"Hi, Palamedes," Gideon managed. "Happy birthday."

He had a black metal case in his arms that looked heavy but he paused, cradling it as he frowned at her. "It's not my birthday."

"You mean I broke my arm for nothing? I was tryin' to let you practice."

"Shut up, Griddle," Harrow said tightly.

"Can you spray that shit again?" Gideon complained. "This stings." It didn't so much sting as _ hurt like hell _ but she didn't want to look like a big baby in front of Camilla.

Palamedes came over to the bed and set his sketchy black case on it. "How bad does it hurt, on a scale from one to ten?" 

"Twelve," Gideon said immediately. "Give me the good shit."

"Are you resistant to painkillers?" Camilla asked from behind her. Gideon heard metal and glass clink. “That’s common in redheads.”

"Uh. I don't actually know," Gideon frowned.

"She's never needed any," Harrow said quietly from the corner. 

"Guess we'll find out," Camilla said. "Hold still."

"Ow," Gideon muttered as the heartless nurse jabbed something into her damn arm. 

Palamedes was unfolding his case and assembling whatever weird robotic toy was inside it. It looked a bit like a microwave, but with no casing. 

"Are you gonna cook a turkey?" Gideon wondered. The shooting pain in her broken arm was subsiding. That was nice. Her back didn't hurt so much anymore either. 

"It's a field X-ray," Palamedes explained. "How are you feeling?"

"Uh." Gideon slowly sat up straighter, her shoulders losing their hunched posture. Her back didn't hurt anymore. It wasn't numb, it just...was fine. Her arm had a dull ache, like she had overused it three days ago. "Good, actually." This was fine. Everything was fine. She looked over at Camilla. “Thank you,” she said sincerely.

Camilla gave her a critical look. “If the bone is shattered we’ll have to amputate.”

Gideon stared at her, her entire body running cold. “Like fucking HELL you will!”

Camilla nodded, satisfied. “Good, I didn’t give you too much. Listen to Palamedes.”

“Oh my GOD,” Gideon complained, turning back to the wincing student. “Doctor, I need to speak to you about your nurse’s bedside manner.”

“This is an X-ray machine,” Palamedes started his explanation over, ignoring the byplay. “Put your arm over here, on the cross.”

“On the X,” Gideon agreed, pleased, and did as he asked.

Palamedes sighed. “Your fractured arm,” he clarified.

“Oh. I guess that makes sense. Don’t bonk it,” she warned him, and carefully laid her splinted arm in the machine. 

Palamedes frowned at the tool. “I’m going to remove this bandage for the X-ray, then we can put a proper cast on it, alright?”

“Cool,” Gideon said, not caring.

“What if it’s a compound fracture?” Camilla asked over her shoulder.

“That would be more complicated,” Palamedes frowned, looking over at Harrow for some reason. “If it needs pins -”

“We’re staying here,” Harrow said. 

“It could permanently limit the strength and motion range of her arm,” Palamedes continued. 

“The clinic would be the worst choice,” Harrow said flatly. “You know why.”

“Let’s see the X-rays first,” Camilla said, moving to unbandage Gideon’s arm.

Their words didn’t bother Gideon much. Limited strength and range of motion sounded bad, she knew, but it would probably all be fine. She found herself staring at the weave of Harrow’s bedding. It was very black. Harrow had brought bedding from home. Or bought new bedding. Gideon decided she would buy some new blankets too. Tomorrow, when she could finally access her money. Blankets and the rubber ducks for the bathroom.

“Hold still,” Palamedes murmured, fiddling with the machine.

Gideon held still. Then she smiled. “This is nice. We’re all bonding as roommates.”

Camilla snorted behind her. Palamedes released her hand, standing up again to fiddle with the machine. 

“Caaaam,” Gideon sang as she sat up. “What drug is this?” 

“It’s a couple of drugs,” Camilla muttered. “Well?”

“Clean break,” Palamedes said with relief. “It’s a simple fracture. Harrow set it fine. We can splint it and let it heal on its own.”

“That’s good,” Gideon said, over Harrow’s audible exhalation by the door. “I need to fight Cam again.”

“Don’t worry, Gideon,” said Camilla. “In six to eight weeks I’ll be more than happy to kick your ass.”

“Like, four weeks,” Gideon said absently. “I heal fast.”

“Six to eight,” Palamedes said firmly. He let Camilla splint Gideon’s arm with real foam-and-metal splints, then helped her arrange the instaplast bandages that would harden into a protective cast around it. “We’ll see how it’s healing before you do any fighting with it at all.”

Gideon made a quiet, disappointed sound, but she wasn’t too bothered. Whatever drugs Cam had shot her up with were really nice, she decided. 

“Camilla,” Palamedes said, “do you want a hand dealing with her back?”

“I can handle the lacerations,” Camilla assured him.

“Is it gonna scar?” Gideon wondered.

“Griddle,” Harrow said, sounding pained.

“Scars are cool,” Gideon shrugged. 

“It might have light scarring,” said Camilla. “You didn’t actually lose much flesh, so it probably won’t be bad.”

‘Didn’t lose much flesh’ was a high endorsement, as far as Gideon was concerned. “It’ll have to try harder next time,” Gideon muttered with a smirk.

“What will?” Camilla asked.

“The,” Gideon hesitated, some tiny ping of a neuron screaming at her, “Uh, the staircase.”

“Right,” Camilla muttered. She looked at Harrow. “I’ll clean her back, and then she should rest, but ideally she should stay awake for a few hours.”

“Understood,” Harrow said, her voice barely above a whisper.

“If she does insist on sleeping, keep an eye on her respiration.”

“Her respiration,” Harrow repeated in a deadpan.

“Yes,” Palamedes agreed. “If she stops breathing, let us know right away.”

Harrow and Gideon exchanged a look.

“Griddle,” Harrow said with a scowl, “you are _ forbidden _ to stop breathing.”

“Uh. Kay,” Gideon managed.

“I’m sure that will take care of it,” Palamedes said dryly. “But keep an eye on her anyway. You’ll be around for the rest of the day?”

“Yes,” Harrow said through gritted teeth.

“Camilla, you’re good? Alright. Be more careful next time,” Palamedes admonished them with a little frown, hefting his field X-ray machine. “....both of you.”

“Yes, Doctor,” Gideon said, and watched him go. She was about to say something super hilarious about his email handle when Cam did something to her shirt that made the pain from the gouges on her back flare up. “Ow! Take it easy,” she complained.

Camilla huffed a breath out. “I can’t work around this thing. I’m going to cut your shirt off. Harrow, get her something loose-fitting, would you?”

“Alright,” Harrow muttered, no doubt annoyed to be sent on a fetch errand. She took Gideon’s fanny pack, containing her keycard, and disappeared out the door.

Cool, smooth metal slid under the first strap of Gideon’s running top and with a little snip the fabric gave way. Gideon sighed, resigned, as Camilla cut the other strap and then slit the shirt up the back, letting the fabric fall forward onto her arms. “I just got this shirt,” she complained to no one in particular. “Wore it once.”

“Those stairs really did a number on you,” Camilla murmured, doing god knows what behind Gideon, but it hurt in short little bursts. “Did Harrow push you down them?”

Gideon snorted, trying to hold still. “Nah. They came for her and I jumped down ‘em instead.”

Camilla just made a low noise behind her. 

When she was done, Gideon carefully peeled off the ruined shirt and let Camilla take it. “Gonna patch my shirt up too?” she joked, hugging the pillow against her bare chest. Just in case Palamedes came back in. He had probably only seen boobs on medical corpses.

“It’s going into the incinerator with your used bandages,” Camilla said firmly. “Buy a new one.”

“Man, I got mad shopping to do,” Gideon murmured. The door opened again behind her and she glanced around to see Harrow enter, her eyes down on the floor and a black T-shirt held out in one hand. “Thanks, Nonageezy.”

Camilla took it and insisted on helping Gideon get it on over her fresh cast and laminated back. Harrow, no doubt bored, busied herself at her desk until they were done. 

“Alright, you should be able to heal up now without getting gangrene,” Camilla said, snapping her case closed. “If you two will excuse me, I’m going to go enjoy using both of my arms.”

“Rude,” Gideon grumbled.

Harrow turned back towards them and, in what was surely a moment of herculean effort, she bowed her head to Camilla and said “Thank you.”

“Next time bring me along,” Camilla said, which was a weird thing to say, because stairs were everywhere, right? But that was all she said, and then the Sixth House cav was gone and the door clicked shut behind her. 

Gideon looked at Harrow expectantly. 

Harrow stared back balefully from her corner by the desk. “....What?”

“I dunno,” Gideon admitted. “I’m high as balls. You gotta keep me awake or I’ll die.”

“Griddle,” Harrow began.

Gideon frowned. “I saw a porno that started this way.”

“GRIDDLE.”

“It was a classy one,” Gideon protested mildly. “It was about these two mountain climbers, I think, and -”

“_Silence,_” Harrow hissed. “I am going to put cartoons on the tablet and you will watch them while I work.”

“That sounds boring,” Gideon protested, just to be contrary. “I’ll probably stop breathing.”

Harrow jerked back, her face contorting into an expression Gideon had never seen before on a Nonagesimus. She made a weird sound, like a hiccup and a small cry at the same time. 

“...Harrow?” Gideon frowned, not sure what was going on.

Harrow spun away, taking a few steps over to her closet and stood there, facing it, a hand pressed to her mouth. Her shoulders were shaking.

Neurons were pinging in Gideon’s brain again. Her grey matter fumbled for the ‘Feelings for Morons’ book. She opened her mouth to ask ‘Are you crying’ but what came out was a blurted “You can _cry?_”

Harrow slowly lowered her hands to smooth down her shirt. She was silent for a moment, then spoke in a cold, deliberate voice. “Just tell me what you want to watch and I will put it on.”

Gideon slid her legs off the bed, her feet thudding on the floor. “No, hang on. Are you hurt too? D’you want me to get Palamedes back in here?”

“I’m fine,” Harrow said, but her voice was raw again and she bowed her head.

Gideon was at a total loss. She had never seen Harrow like this. She rose carefully to her feet and crossed over to her, putting a hand on her back. Harrow flinched but didn’t pull away. “You don’t look fine,” Gideon said, because that was true. “Are you scared?”

“Yes,” Harrow whispered.

“Aw, hell, Harrow,” Gideon sighed. “You don’t have to be scared! I’ll kick all the robot ass. C’mere,” she said, and turned Harrow around by her shoulder to pull her into a big ol’ one-armed hug. 

Harrow froze, her cheek against Gideon’s shoulder. Her hands, still up as if to push Gideon away, pressed against Gideon’s stomach. Gideon just held her tightly and rested her cheek on the curly black hair. “You don’t have to be scared of robots,” she promised. “Okay?”

Harrows nails curled into Gideon’s shirt. She was silent for a moment, shivering, as Gideon rubbed her back in what she intended to be a comforting way. Gideon had never actually hugged anyone before but she had seen it done, and Harrow was warm and oddly comforting against her. As the seconds ticked by in silence, Gideon’s arm stilled, resting against the small of Harrow’s back. She had lost her train of thought. All she could think of was how good it felt to hug Harrow. She closed her eyes, letting out a quiet sigh of contentment. 

And then she swayed, nearly falling over. 

“Fuck,” Gideon spluttered, snapping back awake as Harrow grabbed her shirt. “Sorry!”

“Come sit down, idiot,” Harrow said, resigned. “I’ll… I’ll tell you a story.”

“Cool,” said Gideon, and sheepishly made her way back to the bed. “Tell me why I had to kill a robot today.”

Harrow followed her to the bed but just stood beside it, frowning at Gideon. “Because, even though the network was down, it was still recording. When the network came online the audiovisual records would be uploaded and they would know it was us.”

“Right,” Gideon agreed, shuffling her butt over carefully so she could lie on her right side. She judged the distance wrong and the pillow was a bit too far for her head to reach, but Harrow quickly moved it down where she needed it. “Thanks. Okay. So why were we there?”

Harrow stood back a step. “We were stealing something,” she said warily.

“Yes, a piece of a robot. Why did you need a piece of a robot?” Gideon asked, because now that she thought about it, it was kind of a weird thing for Harrow to do. “You could have bought one. You could have bought a whole servant bot.”

“This is Ninth House business, Nav.”

“But,” Gideon frowned, “I was helping! I wanna know what the mission was.”

Harrow rocked back and forth on her feet for a moment, then slowly climbed up to sit on the bed, on the far side of the pillow above Gideon’s head. She moved carefully, like there was one safe place to sit and the rest of the bed was made of cactuses. Cacti. “I appreciate your help today,” Harrow said, picking her words with the same care that you’d use around scorpions. “But I can’t tell you why I needed that particular item. Because it’s not my secret to share.”

Gideon frowned at that, unhappy. Not because she couldn’t know the secret. Harrow kept secrets from her all the time, that was a familiar pattern. But now Harrow was keeping someone else’s secrets. “Rude,” she mumbled.

“Yes, I know.” Harrow sounded resigned again. And then, incredibly, Harrow managed to make this day even stranger by tentatively reaching down to brush back Gideon’s hair from her temples. “I would tell you if I could, Nav. I think you deserve to know. But I swore to keep it secret, so I can’t.”

Gideon barely registered the words, she was so focused on the feeling of Harrow’s delicate fingers in her hair, smoothing back her messed-up bangs to fall back out of her face. “It’s all good,” she managed, holding very still. 

More seconds ticked by in a silence that Gideon didn’t want to break. She didn’t want Harrow to stop touching her, stroking her temples with her cool fingers, running her nails through the crackling gel of her bangs. Her eyes felt heavy again, so she closed them. “That feels nice,” she murmured. 

She fell asleep to the soothing sensation of Harrow wordlessly stroking her hair.

***

Gideon woke up abruptly, coming full alert from a dreamless sleep. She was in Harrow’s room, and from the bright light behind the curtains it was still daytime. She looked up, ignoring the muted protests in her back, to see Harrow still sitting at the head of the bed and frowning down at her. 

“How do you feel?” Harrow asked.

“Ah.” Gideon did a quick assessment, noting how her body reacted as she sat up carefully. “I’m alright. My arm aches a bit but otherwise I’m okay.” She rubbed her face, looking around again. “Did that all just happen?”

“Yes,” Harrow said, not moving. 

“Okay,” Gideon said. “Well. Okay.” 

They stared at each other for a moment, then both spoke at the same time. 

“Nav, you’re -”

“I gotta pee,” Gideon blurted on top of Harrow’s voice.

Harrow rolled her eyes, relaxing into a familiar annoyed expression. “Well then, go on.”

“Yeah.” Gideon stood and cleared her throat, at a loss for what the proper way to leave the room was. “You know,” she said, wagging a finger on her good hand at Harrow. “You are more interesting and also less evil than I thought.”

Harrow looked up at her from the bed, her expression blank for a moment before she replied carefully. “My estimation of you has not changed at all.”

Gideon laughed. Harrow still couldn’t take a compliment gracefully. “Yeah, ‘cause you already knew I was wicked awesome,” she joked, and smoothed back her bangs from her face. “I’m gonna go, uh. Yeah.”

“You should stay in the apartment for the rest of the day,” Harrow said, finally moving to scoot up from the bed. “Just eat and take it easy and don’t let everyone see that you’ve been mangled by a _ staircase _ on the same day that the robotics storage facility was broken into.”

“Oh, yeah,” Gideon said. “That might look suspicious.”

“We will avoid anyone seeing you, and you can claim to have hurt yourself tomorrow,” Harrow said firmly.

“But the Sixers saw me.”

“They can be trusted,” Harrow muttered. “Unlike everyone else at this University. I’ve covered the cameras in the main room. Don’t remove the tape.”

“What cameras?” Gideon stared, surprised. “In the living room?”

“There’s one above the communication screen,” Harrow said with poor patience. ”How else could people see you when you call them? The other is in the kitchen, hidden in the glass of the microwave.”

“Why is there a camera on the microwave?” Gideon demanded.

“To spy on the students,” Harrow said shortly. “Don’t remove the tape. Don’t talk about being hurt in the common area. We will fake your injury tomorrow.”

“Alright,” Gideon muttered, not protesting. At least Harrow seemed to know what was going on.

Man, what _ was _ going on?

“I’m gonna order food, then, and just sit around and eat it,” she agreed.

“That’s acceptable. I’ll answer the door when the food arrives.”

“Cool,” Gideon said, and found herself staring at Harrow again. “Okay. Uh. I feel like I should thank you for taking care of me but I kinda got hurt helping you, so we’ll call it even. Deal?”

Harrow looked tired. “Go pee, Griddle.”

“Roger that.”

Gideon left Harrow’s room, letting the door close and lock itself behind her. 

The rest of the apartment had not changed at all. It seemed weird, to look at it and know that something was sure as hell up with Harrow and the Ninth House crew, but there was no sign of it around her. And why should there be? Ninth House nonsense didn’t concern her. The other roomies were from Sixth, they wouldn’t care. Even if they were, apparently, willing accomplices. 

She went to the kitchen for a glass of water and saw the thick black band of tape across the centre of the microwave. How had Harrow known that camera was there? What else did she know? Gideon absently started to reach for a glass with her left hand, then had to correct and use her good arm. She stared at the thin plastic cast around her forearm as she drank, thinking back to the fight. She would have done it differently, in retrospect. Gotten the high ground. Or stayed by the mouth of the aisle in the first place so she didn’t get caught. She wanted a redo.

She wanted to fight a robot again.

Gideon drank her water. She used the washroom. And on the way to her room she stopped by the taped-over screen, and activated it.

“Registration desk,” came the pleasant, smiling voice of Registraria from behind the black screen.

“Gideon Nav, student seventy-two,” Gideon said. “I want to apply to a house.”


	9. Two Truths and a Lie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poor Gideon has a broken arm.

Gideon woke from her sleep to something short and sharp rapping on her door in the darkness. She stumbled out of bed, muttering curses and cradling her aching arm. Every muscle in her body protested the movement, screaming about being abused as if she had had the worst workout of her life the day before, and had not stretched properly before or after. 

She jerked her door open to glare down at Harrow, who, in the pre-dawn darkness of this fine spring morning, was perfectly coiffed and dressed and had a black choker with a little padlock on it above all the floofy purple and black lace. 

“What?” Gideon was acutely aware of how she was no doubt a tousled mess, with sleepy eyes and her hair having some kind of wild party on top of her head, but if Harrow wanted to wake her up at god’s ass o’clock then she’d just have to deal with boxers and bedhead.

Harrow scowled at her and made a shushing gesture, pointing at the microwave in accusation. “Camilla is going for a run,” she said.

“Okay?” Gideon tried to rub her eyes with her left fist and bonked herself in the nose with her cast. “Wait, what? So? I’m going back to sleep.”

Harrow pinched the bridge of her nose. “I think she’d really like your company. You should go with her,” she said in a light, happy tone that did not at all match the glare she was now giving Gideon. 

None of this made sense, but Harrow wouldn't dick around for no reason so Gideon just nodded. “Uh yeah, sure. I can do that. I love running.”

Harrow nodded, relieved. “Wear a jacket, it’s cold outside,” she said, reaching up to tap Gideon’s cast meaningfully.

“Oh. Right,” Gideon agreed. “Long sleeves for sure, then,” she promised, and Harrow finally left her doorway, swooshing back into the shadows of the common space.

Gideon closed her door with a little groan. She had forgotten about this part of the plan.

The previous day had been spent in a pleasant relaxation session as the morphine cocktail enabled Gideon to actually enjoy sitting on her ass all afternoon doing nothing. She had slept poorly though, either because of the happy-drug hangover or just the pain starting to creep back in. Now she was supposed to go out with Cam and fake her injury. “Great,” she muttered, searching for her old hoodie. It was black, so she had brought it, but it was a men’s extra large and way too big. If Cam was gonna hack apart her clothes again she didn’t want to ruin the cool, athletic hoodie that fit her properly.

She dressed and made herself presentable, in the sense that she was both _ present _ and at least moderately _ able _. Cam was sitting on a couch tying on her sneakers when Gideon came out of the bathroom. 

“Hey,” Cam greeted her casually. “Ready for a run?”

“Oh yeah,” Gideon said, getting her own shoes. “Born ready. Can’t wait. If I don’t go hit the pavement my whole body’s gonna revolt and run off without me. I’m a lean, mean running machine. I’m -”

“How’d you sleep?” Camilla interrupted.

Gideon might have been offended if she hadn’t been running out of random bullshit to say. Dammit, it was hard to act casual in front of the secret cameras now that she knew they were there. “Like ass,” she answered honestly. 

“Well, that makes two of us,” Cam muttered. 

Harrow came out of her room as they got ready to leave.

“Nav?” she said, in the same hesitant voice she had used days before, when they had first stepped onto Canaan university soil together. And then Gideon had squeaked and run off. 

“Yeah?” Gideon said, not squeaking at all this time.

“The deadline for applying to a house was yesterday,” Harrow began.

“Oh, yeah, don’t worry about it,” Gideon assured her. Harrow was such a nag, reminding her of deadlines like she’d forget them on her own. “I applied in the afternoon.”

Harrow stared at her. “You didn’t mention it.”

Gideon was about to say ‘well I was pretty high’ but the Microwave probably wouldn’t approve of recreational morphine use so she just shrugged. 

“...Well?” Harrow said after a moment of silence. She sounded annoyed again.

Gideon glanced at Cam, not sure what had annoyed the tiny vulture lady now, but Cam was busy examining her nails by the door and really obviously ignoring them. She looked back to Harrow. “Well what?”

Harrow glared at her. “What house did you apply for, Griddle?”

“Oh! You want the sweet gossip, eh?” Gideon smirked. “Just tell the thirsty students to back off, cause I totally applied to Ninth.”

“I’m serious,” Harrow snapped. “Don’t mock me.”

“I would never mock you, Nonageezy,” Gideon said seriously.

Harrow threw her hands in the air and spun away in a swoosh of cloth. “Fine, forget it. I’ll find out sooner or later anyway.”

Gideon watched her with a grin, waiting for the door to close and lock behind her before she turned to join Cam at the exit.

“You look pleased,” Cam ventured as they left.

“She’s gonna be _ so pissed _ when she finds out I wasn’t lying,” Gideon gloated. 

It was cool outside, and still dark, though the sun was clearly in the process of dragging its own butt out of bed because the sky to the east was a lighter shade of dark than the rest of it. 

"We're not actually gonna jog, are we?" Gideon asked warily. 

"With an arm you broke yesterday?" Cam raised an eyebrow at Gideon. "Of course not."

"Oh, thank god," Gideon deflated slightly with relief. Her arm ached and even walking jolted it with each step. A jangling trot would be hideous.

"You would have, though, wouldn't you?" Cam said, leading her down a smaller path behind the building.

"If I had to. Speaking of things I have to do," Gideon said, "these stairs you're leading me to. You're not gonna shove me down them are you?"

"I sincerely hope that you would never let someone shove you down stairs," Camilla said with heavy disapproval in her voice.

"That sounds like something a nurse would say," Gideon said, relieved again. Maybe this morning wouldn’t be absolutely terrible.

"I _ am _a nurse," Cam said. "But it also sounds like something a sane person would say."

Camilla was a beer drinking, dual wielding nurse. Gideon had not thought Cam could get cooler but damn, she just had. "Is Palamedes really a doctor?" 

"Med school student," she said shortly. "Turn here." 

As they crested a low hill they came into view of a construction site where, apparently, a new building was going to be. The land dipped downward towards the distant security wall and a large excavation was fenced off with neon orange plastic fencing, with little signs warning people to stay away. A series of concrete tubes was stacked to the right of the path on the flat earth and a big truck was parked and empty in the dark lot beyond. 

"Well this looks like a perfectly reasonable place for a walk, and not at all sketchy," Gideon said.

"It's the only credible place for a fall that doesn't have security cameras yet," Cam said, cutting left away from the path and heading along the edge of the excavation. 

"Okay, but," Gideon said, catching her foot on a root in the darkness and stumbling, though managing to not actually fall. "Hang on, how do you know where the cameras are?"

Camilla shrugged. "I don't. But Harrow does, or claims to, and she picked this place." She had paused when Gideon nearly tripped, but continued through the scrubby weeds as she caught up.

"How does Harrow know?" Gideon pressed.

"You'd have to ask her. She says it's Ninth House business."

"Then why are _ you _ helping?" Gideon wondered. 

"Because Palamedes asked me to," Camilla answered. "Alright, this looks like a good spot."

Gideon eyed the twelve foot drop into the earth. The foundation had not been poured yet and the hole looked like an open grave for a giant. "Great."

"It makes sense," Camilla said, though she was also giving the ledge a critical look. "We're not allowed here, so if you got hurt here it would explain why you wouldn't go to the clinic. Alright. We need to get this done before anyone comes. Roll in the dirt."

"Roll in the dirt?" Gideon repeated, peering at her expression in the dim light to see if she was serious. "Like, here?"

"Yes, here," Camilla said. "Hurry up!"

Gideon abandoned logic and carefully dropped to the ground, then rolled and writhed around in the dust and weeds to completely cover herself in both. 

Camilla knelt beside her and, with a surprising amount of care, rubbed dirt on the sleeve covering her broken arm so it would match. She then carefully helped Gideon up. "Okay, you just fell. Now I have to go in after you and boost you out, then we can let you hobble home cradling your arm, and we'll say you broke your wrist.”

"I broke my arm," Gideon protested.

"Wrists are more likely to break when you fall. Wait here," Camilla said, then pushed through a gap in the plastic barrier. With a little hop, she vanished over the side of the hole.

Gideon made a strangled sound as she swallowed a yell, then cautiously approached the side. Camilla was picking herself up off the bottom of the excavation, brushing dirt from her dark hair and bare arms. She looked around and started jogging towards the nearest corner, where timber was stacked. "Come on," she called.

"I was promised no jogging," Gideon called back, but walked at a respectable speed to the lumber, seeing what Camilla had in mind. "Stay back, Gideon, you moron, I'm going to make a ramp with this lumber and get you out."

"Good plan, Camilla," Camilla called back dryly. "Good thing you're here or I'd be stuck in this hole with my broken wrist like an idiot."

"Yeah, yeah." Gideon looked over the boards and grabbed the end of the longest, dragging it one handed to the hole and tossing one end down before going back for another. "Good thing I'm so amazing."

Camilla set the board against the wall at a steep angle, then caught the next one and made a parallel track beside it. "Is there rope up there?"

"No." Gideon cast around in the growing light. "Oh, there's a roll of the fence! Hang on." She grabbed the rolled up mesh and brought it to the edge, keeping a grip on the loose end and letting it unroll into the hole. Cam grabbed the end and started climbing the boards as Gideon planted her heels in the dirt and held on to the mesh with a death grip. She leaned back against it as Cam used it to help her climb, until Cam's other hand grabbed the edge of the hole. 

"Pull," Camilla called, and Gideon doggedly hauled back, helping her get up over the crumbling edge of the hole.

Camilla scrambled over, releasing the mesh as she got her feet beneath her again. "Are you alright?" she asked, her tone all business.

"You're the one who jumped off a cliff!"

Camilla waved that away. "If you know how to fall then it's not exactly difficult to avoid injury. It's not that deep."

"When my arm gets better, you gotta show me how to do that," Gideon said. One area she knew she lacked practice in was tumbling and practical athletics. "I wanna try parkour."

"It's pronounced par-koor," Camilla said, leading them back the way they had come. "But sure. In six to eight weeks."

"We'll see," Gideon said, impatient to be healed and active again. "I heal fast."

"So you said yesterday, but you can't know that if you've never been badly hurt."

Gideon looked at Cam, confused. "I've broken stuff before."

Camilla stopped and stared at her, planting her feet like she was not going to be moved. "Harrow told us you had never needed painkillers before. That was already a stretch to believe, but now you're telling me you've broken bones before and never taken anything for pain?"

"It's complicated," Gideon said. Why had she even brought it up again? She wanted to spar with Cam, not argue with her.

Cam was unimpressed. "Simplify it."

"I've had normal stuff, okay? Like I’ve had ibuprofen to take down the swelling when I got hurt, or that one time I had a fever. But I always told them I didn't want any serious painkillers."

"You seemed pretty eager to try some yesterday," Camilla pointed out.

"Well, sure, because I trust you not to kill me!" Gideon's face was hot with embarrassment, and anger. Not anger at Camilla, though. She was pissed at the Nonagesimus doctor-duo, who still managed to fuck things up for her. If she had just been raised by normal people then she wouldn't have to explain this kind of fucked up stuff to cool people. "Now can we go back?"

"No," Camilla said, merciless. "You've only had a fever once?"

"I was young. I got sick." Gideon's entire body ached at her. Her back was itchy and the dirt up the back of her shirt wasn't helping. Also her arm hurt and she was tired. "I will give you a complete medical history later, but I'm gonna go home now."

Camilla still looked suspicious but grudgingly nodded, which was a relief because Gideon was in absolutely no condition to throw down with her. "Fine. And we had better stay in character on the way back. Cradle your arm against your chest like you just broke it -"

"I _ did _ just break it."

"And look like it hurts," Camilla finished as if Gideon hadn't interrupted.

"It _ does _ hurt." Gideon cradled her arm though, remembering the much sharper pain of yesterday when she and Harrow had been hurrying through the dark tunnels. "Man, how is it possible that you're even more unpleasant about my arm than Harrow?"

Camilla shrugged, her eyes scanning the area around them as they resumed walking. "Why wouldn't I be? She's your friend, of course she's nice to you."

Gideon made a sound that was _ supposed _ to be a laugh but came out a bit wrong, and now Camilla was watching her again. "Oh, no. She's not my friend."

"You two grew up together, didn't you?"

"Yeah, but she's like, my hated rival."

"Your hated rival," Camilla repeated.

"Yeah, that."

"...your hated rival, who you jumped down some stairs for."

Gideon hesitated. "Metaphorically. I didn't actually jump. I mean… the stairs were coming, and I charged, but...Okay, listen, injury was not a certain thing."

"Your arm was crushed enough to snap your bone," Camilla said doggedly. 

"So?"

"So that doesn't sound like something you'd do for an enemy."

"I didn't say," Gideon began, but she was annoyed and confused and it was hard to keep track of what she had said. "Harrow is just… she's my…" Gideon frowned, searching for the right word. Rival wasn’t right because they didn’t really compete. Companion sounded too nice. Nemesis? Frenemy?

"She's your?" Camilla prompted.

"She's just… Harrow," Gideon said. "And Harrow is my something."

"She's your Harrow, then?"

Gideon laughed, relaxing. "Yes! She's my Harrow. You should be glad you don't have a Harrow. They're a lot of upkeep."

"I'll bear that in mind."

"You gotta annoy them daily, for one thing."

Camilla glanced at her. "Or else what?"

"I dunno," Gideon muttered. Camilla really knew how to suck the fun out of a joke with her questions. "They shrivel up and die, probably. Harrows are fueled by irritation."

***

The second half of the plan was way better, as far as Gideon was concerned. It was the part where everyone showered her with sympathy and affection like she damn well deserved, and it started before they even got in the door. 

“Ohmygosh, Gideon! Camilla!” Jeannemary stared from where she stood in the doorway to the residence building, and Isaac had to push past her to see. 

“What happened?” he asked, his eyes wide.

“Nothing,” Gideon said, carefully cradling her arm against her chest. “Just tripped a bit, it’s fine.”

“But -” Jeannemary began.

“Excuse us,” Cam said firmly, and the teens practically flew apart as she advanced, a protective arm around Gideon’s back. Jeannemary hung on to the door, holding it open for them, and stared as they went by. 

“Are you okay?” Isaac ventured. “Do you want us to call Magnus?”

“Who the fuck is Magnus?” Gideon wondered.

“No, don’t call anyone,” Camilla said, hustling Gideon along to the elevator and mashing the button. “She just sprained her wrist. We’ll put ice on it, it’s fine.”

“If you’re sure,” Jeannemary said doubtfully. The twins stared from the entrance until the elevator _ bing _ed Cam and Gideon away to the third floor.

“I thought we were gonna say my wrist was broken?” Gideon muttered as the elevator hummed.

Camilla shooshed her. “Not here,” she muttered.

Once inside the apartment, Gideon was herded into Cam’s room, where she and Dr. Pal went through the motions of diagnosing the break and putting the cast on her arm. Harrow wasn’t there this time, though. Her door remain closed and locked.

“Now what?” Gideon asked as they finished their dramatic reenactment of yesterday’s scene. “Do I get the sweet meds again?”

“Does it still hurt?” Camilla asked, packing away her first aid kit. It slid into a spot on the shelf between a stack of heavy hardcover books and another metal box that looked like a tool case. Everything in Camilla's room was neatly put away, Gideon noticed. She was a meticulous person.

Gideon shrugged her good shoulder. “Yeah, but not nearly as much,” she answered. “It’s just sore.”

“It’s probably better if you just take some over the counter painkillers,” Palamedes said, though from his thoughtful frown he wasn’t thinking of her health or comfort. “If you’re going to get visitors today then you might let something slip if you’re too relaxed.”

“Why would I be getting visitors?” Gideon wondered. 

“Well,” Palamedes said, “I’m going to go back to my chat with Dulcie, and it would be natural for me to mention something like this happening. Which means she’ll probably tell Cytherea.”

“Which means every student in the school will know in about five minutes,” Camilla said wryly.

“She really does sing like a canary,” Gideon said, earning another scrutinizing look from both Cam and Palamedes this time. “Hey, uh, I’m gonna go clean up, then. If you think they’re gonna come by. I’m covered in dirt.”

“I’ve got classes,” Cam said. “So I’m going to head out. Remember: we were jogging and exploring, you wanted to see the hole closer, like an idiot.”

“Thanks.”

“And you slipped when the ledge gave way,” Camilla continued over her. “We thought you sprained your wrist, like we told the children, but it turns out it was broken. So now you’re stuck healing instead of training.”

“Which sucks,” Gideon said with feeling. “Alright, I get it. Go to class. Hey,” she paused at the door. “I thought you were already a nurse?”

Camilla just looked at her. “I’m getting my master’s.”

“Oh.” Gideon said. Then, “Cool.”

“Bye,” Camilla ordered. Palamedes just stood there, obviously waiting for Gideon to leave, too. 

So she did.

\---

Showering and getting changed turned out to be a good plan because five minutes after Gideon had settled herself on the couch, now in track pants and a loose T-shirt with her arm in a sling, there was a knock at the door. 

Gideon got up automatically to answer it but Palamedes, lurking in the kitchen, waved her back down. “I’ll get it,” he said, hurrying to open the door. “You rest.”

“My arm’s broken, my legs are fine,” Gideon protested, but she sat back on her ass anyway. It felt nice to have someone be solicitous, even if he was bossy about it. She was used to being ordered around. If Palamedes had been all sweet and nice about it then she would have wondered what he wanted, but the whole ‘why are you getting up, idiot?’ tone really worked to convey caring. 

Palamedes was rewarded for his good deed by getting to be the first to see Dulcinea when he opened the door. “Oh!” The surprised smile lit up his face, making him look like a Nice Boy. “Dulcie. I was just going to message you. Hi Cyth,” he closed the door behind them as they came in, then immediately took Dulcinea’s hand. 

Cytherea had a clear plastic food bag full of cookies in her hands, and from the steam fogging the top of it they were fresh. “We heard that Gideon and Camilla were training on the security wall and fell off and that Gideon’s arm was snapped in six places,” she said with a charming mix of humour and genuine concern. “Isaac was on the student boards an hour ago, asking if others thought that he should call the RA,” she added as an explanation, though Gideon had no idea what an RA was. Probably this Magnus guy.

“I fell, not Cam,” Gideon said from the couch,”and it’s only snapped in one or two places. Are those cookies?”

Cytherea gasped and sashayed straight to the couch. “Your arm’s actually broken?”

“Oh no,” Dulcinea said, she and Palamedes taking the second little couch opposite Gideon’s. “I was hoping it was just an exaggerated rumour.”

“Are you alright?” Cytherea said.

Gideon felt her face heating again under the scrutiny of the Seventh House beauties. “I’ll be alright. Palamedes fixed up my arm. Wrist.”

“Cam did most of the work,” Palamedes protested, but Dulcinea hugged him and leaned in to kiss his cheek proudly, so he blushed red and shut up. 

“What happened?” Cytherea asked intently.

Gideon shrugged her good shoulder and evaded the question as best as she could. She didn’t really like lying to her friends and she had a gut feeling that ‘I fell into a hole’ wouldn’t convince Cytherea. She decided to save the official version for other people. “Okay, so, I may or may not have been somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be. Cam may or may not have also been there. And I definitely broke my wrist trying to pull off a badass move, but uh. It’s fine. I’ll be fine.” There, that was close enough. 

“Were you really training on the wall?” Dulcinea asked incredulously.

“Man, I’m not gonna say where I was, the microwave’s listening,” Gideon protested.

Dulcinea rolled her eyes. “Don’t tell me you believe that rumour.”

“Harrow taped it up and everything.” Gideon gestured with a thumb towards the kitchen. “But it could be listening.”

“How would the administration ever get anything done if they spent all their time eavesdropping on undergrads?” Dulcinea pointed out reasonably.

Gideon just shrugged, suspecting that despite Dulcinea’s skepticism, Harrow was, as usual, right. She typically was when the answer relied on cynicism and suspicion. Those were her domains. 

Palamedes lit up with interest, though, and turned to Dulcinea. “Actually,” he began, “it’s much more likely that long term wide-net surveillance would be done with an algorithm. It would be the most efficient way to monitor...”

Gideon ignored them as they talked about what sounded like math and turned back to Cytherea. “Are those cookies for us?” she up-nodded at the plastic bag.

“That depends,” Cytherea said with a smile. “This badass move that you hurt yourself doing... Was it _ super _badass?”

Gideon’s crooked smile broke into a full grin at the memory of flipping over the top of the robot. “Oh man, it was killer. Almost landed it, too. Next time.”

“Well, as long as it was killer,” Cytherea sighed, and opened the bag to release a warm waft of fresh chocolate chip cookies. “This is a lame present,” she apologized as Gideon hungrily reached for three, “but I was always told to bring food when people were hurt or sick and a cookie mix was all I had.”

“There’s nothing lame about your cookies,” Gideon said around a mouthful. 

“You’re so sweet to say so.” Cytherea leaned forward to offer the bag to Palamedes too but he shook his head in polite refusal. “You can share them with Cam, then. And um, your other roommate? Harrow..?”

“Oh yeah,” Gideon glanced over at the locked door. “Her. HEY NONAGESIMUS,” she hollered, “THERE’S COOKIES HERE.”

There was a moment of silence, then Harrow’s door creaked open and her pale face scowled out suspiciously at the room. Gideon grinned, unaccountably pleased to find that Harrow was here after all. She had changed outfits since that morning and was now dressed to the nines - heh, the Nines - and wore a poofy purple and black dress with little skulls on it. The craziest thing she had was what looked like sound cancelling headphones with skulls covering the ears and a neat pink ribbon tied in a bow on top. Harrow lifted a skull from her ear and asked, “Did someone call me?” in the same way a cop on a serial drama might ask ‘did you shoot this man?’

Gideon waved her over. “Cookies!”

“Harrow,” Palamedes said seriously, “If you have a moment, I’d like to introduce you to Dulcinea, and her cousin Cytherea.”

Trapped by manners, Harrow grudgingly came into the living room to join them. “I’ve met Cytherea.”

“But only _ briefly, _” Cytherea protested, looking delighted. 

“You guys know each other?” Gideon asked.

Harrow ignored her. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Dulcinea,” she said stiffly. “Palamedes is unfailingly complimentary when he speaks about you, which is often.”

“Thank you,” Dulcinea said with a sweet smile. She was so pretty and soft and nice, it was no wonder Palamedes stared at her like a besotted teenager. Gideon watched Harrow instead, because Harrow Interacting Politely With People was always funny. “It’s a pleasure to meet a friend of Pal’s.”

Gideon nearly repeated “Friend?” in an incredulous tone but fortunately her mouth was full of a cookie and she just made a weird sound around it instead. 

Harrow gave her a suspicious look anyway. “I’m working. I will let you all chatter without me.”

“Won’t you take a cookie?” Cytherea asked, offering the bag to her.

Harrow drew back like it was full of snakes. “No.” Then, “Thank you.”

Gideon was so proud of Harrow for knowing two whole manners. “More for me,” she said, and took another as Harrow went to the kitchen area to get herself a glass of poison or glare at the microwave or whatever. 

“You deserve all the cookies,” Cytherea agreed solicitously. “How’s your arm? Does it hurt?”

“It’s not too bad,” Gideon said. “Camilla gave me a shot of morphine or something,” she added, which was sort of true, because that had happened yesterday.

“It must be so convenient having a nurse as a roommate,” Cytherea said.

“Why didn’t you go to the clinic?” Dulcinea asked.

“Cause I don’t wanna get in shit,” Gideon shrugged. “I don’t need to, anyway, I got a doctor and a nurse right here.”

“Medical student,” Palamedes mumbled a quiet protest.

“I’ll be fine,” Gideon said. “Just gotta let it heal up for a few weeks and I’ll be back in fighting form.”

“Six to eight weeks,” Palamedes insisted.

Gideon frowned at him. “My arm’s gonna atrophy and fall off if I wait that long!”

“I’m sure your House trainer can help with physio,” Cytherea said, her tone soothing. “Injuries are unfortunately pretty common for cavs, so they know how to treat them.”

“I guess,” Gideon shrugged, again finding it weird to think there might be staff here whose purpose was to help her in any way. She didn’t say that she had planned to find a fitness AR and get Kiki to run the physio rehab program. She kind of missed Kiki, actually, as weird as that was. The virtual trainer had been the only kind adult she knew, growing up. Maybe she’d boot up a local version of Kiki anyway, at the gym.

“Gideon?” Cytherea said tentatively, and thoughts of virtual girls evaporated as Gideon turned to look at her. “Speaking of Houses.”

The rustling in the kitchen grew suddenly quiet.

“Yeah?” Gideon said.

“Which House did you end up applying to?” Cytherea asked.

“Ninth,” Gideon said, then grinned hugely at the sound of Harrow’s ceramic mug crashing into the sink. “And I got in, too. I haven’t met Ortus yet but he’s their only cav and he already accepted my application. Oh, hi again, Harrow.”

Harrow had appeared from behind the cabinets and was now trying to light Gideon on fire with the fury of her glare. “Nav. May I have a word with you? Privately?”

“You may have _ two _,” Gideon said generously. “And they should be ‘thank you’.”

“_Now. _”

“Okay, okay.” Gideon got up and followed Harrow towards her room, a victorious grin on her face.


	10. Your Sword, My Lady

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gideon reaches an understanding with Harrow, then talks to Magnus and the gang.

The instant the door locked behind them, Harrow rounded on Gideon.

“What were you thinking?” she demanded in a hiss. Her face was extra pale beneath her makeup except for where twin blooms of fury tinted her cheeks pink. “Were you even thinking at all? Are you capable of thought? These questions are rhetorical because you have just given ample evidence that you are not! Tell me you were lying to the Seventh just now. Tell me this is a hideous attempt at humour.”

Gideon felt a welcome heat in the centre of her chest, the kind that always came when Harrow was mad at her. The angrier Harrow was, the warmer she felt, and now she could not help but grin widely in the face of Harrow’s absolute reprobation. “Nope,” she said and ambled the two steps to Harrow’s funeral bier of a bed, sitting on it without permission.

Harrows hands were like claws in front of her, as though she wanted to grab Gideon and shake her. Gideon wanted to see her try. 

“Nav,” she hissed.

“Yes, Dark Student of the Robotic Arts?”

Harrows pressed her fingertips to her temples. “Have you _ actually _ signed up as a Ninth House cav?”

Gideon nodded eagerly.

“You’re aware,” Harrow continued, her black eyes burning into Gideon’s gold gaze, “that you cannot _ undo _ such a decision? That you will be trapped as a cavalier to a House that does not want or even need one, for the rest of your many years here at Canaan?”

“Yep,” Gideon agreed.

Harrow stared at her, her hands slowly falling to her sides, her head canting slightly, like she was a marionette that had just been very gently put on its shelf. “Why?”

“Now you can tell me the secret!” Gideon said, revealing her brilliant plan.

“What secret?” Harrow’s gaze was haunted now. “_ Which _ secret are you referring to?”

“The reason we had to go beat up a robot. I’m in Ninth now, and it’s Ninth business, right? So now you can tell me!” Gideon leaned back on one hand, her other arm in a sling between them. “So why’d you need to steal a robot sternum?”

Harrow’s gaze narrowed suspiciously. “Are you telling me that you willingly signed up to the one house that could _ least _ support your dreams of being, quote, the most kickass cav ever, anywhere?”

“I can do that on my own,” Gideon shrugged.

“You signed up to the Ninth house, for at least four years of your life,” Harrow pressed, “to learn _ one secret _?”

Gideon nodded. “Yop.”

“No.” Harrow advanced on her now, slowly closing the gap between them. “I don’t believe it. Even you aren’t that impulsive. Why did you really join?”

Gideon’s grin only widened, her heart beating faster as Harrow stopped in front of her, the full skirt of her dress brushing Gideon’s knees. She looked up at Harrow and felt no fear or anger at all. This must be what winning felt like, the heat in her face and the reckless desire to push things further. “I’m in your room again,” she pointed out smugly.

Harrow looked lost. “What.”

“Tell me a story,” Gideon wheedled.

“_ What? _”

“Why did we steal a robot Nonagesimus?” Gideon canted her head to one side. “And can we do it again?”

“Again?” Harrow’s voice effortless ascended three octaves in a single bound.

“It was fun!”

“You broke your arm!”

“It’ll heal,” Gideon said carelessly. Harrow shook her head and started to step back but Gideon was faster, leaning forward and capturing her wrist in a tight grip. She liked Harrow close to her, and off balance like that. “Tell me, Harrow. Why’d we need a robot?”

“I -” Harrow froze, shivering, and Gideon immediately let go, worried that Harrow was afraid of her. Harrow was slow to pull her arm back, though, and made no move to retreat. “I have… a great deal that I should tell you,” she managed in a tight voice.

“Cool,” Gideon said, and gave the bed beside her a little pat. “So get cracking.”

Like a trapped creature, Harrow slowly moved to sit beside her in the same overly cautious, mincing way she had sat beside her head the previous day when Gideon was freshly injured. “Griddle. Your involvement with the operation yesterday -”

“I was amazing,” Gideon reminded her, once again able to look down to see the shorter girl now that Harrow had stopped looming and was sitting beside her. 

“Your performance was adequate,” Harrow said grudgingly, sending fresh waves of warm victory through Gideon’s entire being. “But your involvement was accidental! You saw how serious this ongoing effort is.”

“What’s the effort, though?” Gideon pressed.

Harrow held up a hand to forestall her questions. “If I am going to enlist your help for this,” she began.

“I’ll help,” Gideon promised immediately.

“Shut up and listen to me, Nav. If you are going to get embroiled in this, which is the absolute last thing I ever planned for or wanted, the only way that is going to happen is if you renew your vow.”

“What, to do what you say?” Gideon didn’t have to consider that one. She just wanted to know what was going on, and to hit more robots with swords, and to have Harrow say she had performed adequately. “Sure, no sweat.”

“This is a very complex, dangerous oper-nnng what?” Harrow stared at where Gideon had just taken Harrow’s delicate gloved hand into her large and calloused one. “What are you doing?”

“Harrowhark the Merciless,” Gideon said sincerely, “Harrowhark the Nasty and Clever and Ruthless, I promise to do whatever the fuck you order me to, in whatever way is relevant to this robot-stealing business, for as long as I have to, in order for us to totally win.”

Harrow’s eyes were so wide and so dark that Gideon could have fallen into them. “You promise?”

Gideon just nodded. “I am your sword, my Lady.”

Harrow’s hand closed convulsively on hers, her bony hands capable of a surprising strength. “Alright,” she whispered, her face close to Gideon’s. “Then we’ll do it this way. I’ll tell you everything. Eventually. There’s just… so much to tell you.”

“So start at the beginning,” Gideon said gently. 

Harrow stared at her in silence. Her lips parted like she was going to speak, but she only licked them. Her grip somehow got even tighter on Gideon’s hand. 

“Harrow?” Gideon prompted.

“I never hated you,” Harrow blurted.

Gideon sat back, startled. “What?” What reality was she in? What time was it? Had she died? Hit her head? “What does that have to do with robots?” Her own voice climbed in confusion, scrambling up an octave to get away from the impossible implications of those short, writhing words.

“What?” Harrow blinked like she was coming out of a trance. “Nothing! Everything,” she corrected herself. “Shut up, Griddle. Listen.”

Gideon made an uncertain ‘nnnnnn’ sound, and they both leaned apart, dropping each other’s hands abruptly.

“The university is experimenting with artificial intelligence,” Harrow began.

“Right.” Gideon cleared her throat. “Yeah.”

“It is also experimenting with bionic intelligence,” Harrow continued.

Gideon nodded, already lost.

Harrow frowned at her, the familiar contemptuous look of someone who considers calculus to be a fun pastime for children. “Griddle. They are trying to find a way to copy someone’s consciousness over onto a robotic body.”

“Oh.” Gideon latched on to this normal bullshit eagerly, because it had nothing to do with feelings and everything to do with potentially fighting more robots. “But I thought that was impossible?”

“That’s what they want people to think. The robot that we stole was an early attempt at the procedure. We’re trying to reverse engineer what they did, so we can find a way to prevent it from happening again.”

“Woah. Wait, hold up,” Gideon frowned. “You’re saying there’s a person in the robot we stole?”

Harrow nodded. “Yes. Actually…” she hesitated, then shrugged. “And you should know: it’s your grandfather.”

Gideon stared at Harrow. All the parts of her brain that had been thinking about other things, like how Cytherea was still in the living room and what did Harrow mean_ never hated her _ and also that her cast was itchy, immediately stopped the same way a truck that drives into an overpass support pillar stops: completely and with a catastrophic crunching.

“What?” she said.

Then, “Hold up, what?”

Harrow had turned her face away, a thoughtful frown on her thin lips as she picked at her dress. “We succeeded in interfacing with the remnant last night. But all he says is his name, rank, and serial number. It’s not clear if he’s sane or not, or even a complete neural image. It might just be an experimental fragment.”

“Why didn’t you lead with this?” 

“I am,” Harrow turned the frown on her, her voice dry. “I just told you.”

“But,” Gideon started, then stopped. “Would you have told me if I wasn’t in Ninth House?”

“It is academic,” Harrow shrugged. “You are, and you’ve sworn to aid us, so I am at a greater liberty to inform you of certain facts.”

“And my grandfather is stuck in a robot?” Gideon surged to her feet, pacing the small room. Her eyes scanned each surface restlessly and she realized she was looking for the smooth metal casing they had stolen yesterday. There was no sign of it. 

“Your grandfather is dead,” Harrow said deliberately. “But there appears to be an image made of his neural network, yes.”

“Is the image conscious?” Gideon stopped, staring down at the Robot Adept in her Floofy Robes. “Is he like the ghost in the shell? But my grandfather instead of a hot anime cop?”

Harrow scowled at her. “We have no clear evidence if the image is even capable of consciousness, or that it’s complete. It could just be a recording of his knowledge base at the time it was taken.”

“Could he be conscious?” Gideon pressed.

“It is highly unlikely,” Harrow said, which was totally a yes in Gideon’s mind.

“I wanna talk to him!” She planted her feet defiantly, fully intending on wresting away this one, single lead to her past and her family that she never knew. “What’s his name?”

“Gideon,” Harrow’s tone was warning.

“Tell me!”

“Idiot! His name is Gideon. You were probably named after him. Griddle, you can’t just talk to him. We only have a text interface, for one thing -”

“You could rig up a microphone, or plug him into a real robot,” Gideon protested, but Harrow was still talking.

“And! You don’t fully grasp the complexity of the situation. This is is not university-approved research, Nav. Secrecy is imperative or else the entire effort is doomed. And I’m only just now finding out how your family is tied up in the research efforts.”

“What research efforts?” Gideon burst out. If she had had both arms working properly she would have grabbed Harrow’s narrow shoulders and shaken her so hard her teeth rattled straight out of her head, and then she would have just asked her teeth for answers. “What _ about _ my family? Does this have to do with my father?”

Harrow pursed her lips in irritation, the _ of course not, idiot, _ already written on her face, but then she froze. Her ugly scowl of annoyance turned into an ugly scowl of thinking hard. 

“Nonagesimus,” Gideon started, but Harrow stood up abruptly, raising a hand to abjure her.

“I am going to the lab,” she said. “I am going to attempt to investigate the degree to which your father and your father’s father are involved in this business. When I am more certain, I will tell you everything I can.”

“I’ll come with you,” Gideon offered.

“I think not.” Harrow moved to her desk, gathering seemingly random key fobs and tablets and gizmos into her satchel. “You just broke your arm. Enjoy your visitors and well-wishers.”

“I don’t wanna be sick, I want to be where the action is,” Gideon protested, feeling that this was all vastly unfair.

“Yes, well. Life is hard, Nav. Stay here and play your part. That’s an order,” she added sharply, and those short words snapped Gideon’s jaw shut again. 

Gideon stared at Harrow, her chest on fire, a pressure building behind her temples like a great force squeezing inward. But she had promised. “As you command,” she grated.

Harrow regarded her gravely, with that peculiar, expressionless look that was so very _ her _. “...I’ll talk to you tonight, Nav.”

“You’d friggen _ better _,” Gideon huffed, and stormed out the door.

The problem with huffing out of a room here in residence was that you weren't huffing off into some cold hallway devoid of personality where anyone who saw you wouldn't care about your bad mood anyway. No, here, Gideon realized, huffing away from Harrow meant huffing towards other people. Some of whom were worryingly attractive, and looking at her in concern.

"Everything alright?" Cytherea asked solicitously. 

Gideon shrugged her good shoulder. "Just Harrow being Harrow," she said, brushing it off. Cam had reappeared from wherever she had gone and was getting drinks for people from the kitchen. 

"You should have some water," she told Gideon. Cam had evidently engaged Nurse Mode.

"But beer is so tasty," Gideon said.

Cam gave her a look that was flatter than a corpse's EKG, and poured her a tall glass of water. 

Gideon accepted it with a sigh and returned to the cookie couch. 

"Let me guess," Cytherea said, scooting closer to Gideon as she sat down. "She didn't say thank you?"

Gideon shrugged again, making some kind of noise into her water. Harrow sure as hell hadn't said thank you… but she hadn't said no, either. She had said _ alright _ and _ we'll do it this way. _ The 'we' was an enticing promise, and Gideon's pulse spiked at the thought of what their next felonious adventure might be. 

"Well, I would have welcomed you into Seventh," Cytherea said with a little sigh, and just for a moment she held Gideon's heart over a meat grinder, but then she smiled and leaned against Gideon's arm like she had on the walk to Seventh Heaven and said, "and I still will. If you ever want to come spar or train, just ask me or Pro or Dulcie to sign you in."

"Really?" Gideon couldn't help but show her surprise, and she looked to Dulcinea for confirmation. 

Dulcie and Pal were cuddled together under a plaid blanket (hands chastely visible and holding cups of juice that Cam had brought) and she was so wholesome and sweet that Gideon would have believed anything she said. 

"Of course you're welcome," Dulcinea agreed. "You're our friend."

"Hell yeah I am," Gideon vowed. "If you ever need anything… like. Robot parts for an art project or something…" Everyone laughed at that, including Gideon. But she didn't know what else to say. "No, but really. Thanks."

Harrow's door suddenly swung open, and Gideon inexplicably had to fight the urge to pull away from Cytherea. Harrow gave no sign that she noticed any of them, however, and instead swept her skirts to the front door. Her satchel was crammed full of stuff and she had that look in her eyes that said a library should be sweating nervously somewhere close by. 

She would have made a suitably antisocial and mysterious exit, too, if someone hadn't knocked on the front door as she reached for it. The knock was loud and jolly, a rhythmic little shave-and-a-haircut, with a proud two-bits at the end.

She jerked back her outstretched hand like the doorknob was red hot, but then seeing that she was the closest to the door and no one else was going to open it, for goodness sake Harrow, she reluctantly cracked it open.

"Oh," she said, in the carefully neutral tones that most people instinctively understood as poorly veiled displeasure. "You must be Magnus."

“Very astute of you, young Miss!” The voice from the hallway was broad and cheerful. It probably had big, white teeth and liked to order people into group poses for photos. “And let’s see now, I’ve already met delightful Camilla, and you don’t seem like a Palamedes, so you must be Harrowhark. Fabulous to meet you, child.”

Harrow yielded ground to this onslaught of good-natured conversation, backing away to avoid a horrible fate like someone shaking her hand. 

Magnus took this as a tacit invitation and stepped into the room, smiling around benignly at the rest of them. “Ah ha, I see I’m not the first company to arrive! There, now, you’re the one with the cast, you must be Gideon. How are you doing, my dear?”

Gideon had never been anyone’s dear anything, and even though the appellation was obviously just part of how Magnus spoke, she found herself instinctively warming up to the middle-aged man with the brown hair and soft features. He was physically quite average, but his eyes twinkled with good humour and the hint of a very clever kind of intelligence. She found herself returning the grin. “I’m doing better now, thanks. Did the kids tell you what happened?”

“Ah, now, when you reach the ripe old age of thirty-something, every undergraduate feels like a kid,” Magnus said philosophically. “But if you mean Jeannemary and Isaac,” he continued, and Gideon clearly heard Jeannemary’s sudden quiet wail of ‘Magnus, nooo!’ from the hallway beyond him, “well they might have mentioned they saw you looking a bit dishevelled, yes.”

“Magnus,” Isaac complained, also evidently lurking back there, “don’t mention us!”

“But you can’t blame them,” Magnus continued blithely, coming in to help himself to a cookie. “They’re quite impressed with you, Miss Nav, of course it was natural for them to be concerned.”

“Magnus whyyyy,” came the teenage lament from the hall.

Gideon snorted. “You guys might as well come in here too,” she called. 

After a moment of mortified whispering, the red-faced teens shuffled their way awkwardly into the room. Magnus seemed to take a perverse pleasure in drawing out their embarrassment by going around and introducing everyone to everyone, and making extra sure that the teens knew who all these glamorous college-age students were. “Yes, and did you both know that Dulcinea won a prestigious award for her most recent painting, _ Light through the Water?” _

“Magnus, we knowwww.”

“Oh, and Palamedes is a medical student! Isaac, you could go into medicine one day, with your degree. You’ll have to study hard though, just like he does, ha ha!”

“Magnus, stooooop.”

Eventually everyone had been suitably lauded. Except Harrow. She had swooshed away like an offended nun when the teens came in, and thus escaped introduction hell. No one really seemed to have noticed but Gideon wished she had stayed longer. It would have been funny to hear what Magnus would say about Harrow to further agonize the very shy teens. 

“So you’re an RA?” Gideon said once Magnus ran out of steam. “What’s an RA?”

“Ah, I’m the Residence Administrator,” Magnus explained. “Someone has to be responsible when so many young people are gathered together, and that, lamentably, is my burden. Fortunately it’s offset by the absolute delight that everyone always is.”

“Delight?” Gideon’s eyebrows rose.

“Oh yes,” Magnus said. “Students are always doing interesting things. For example, what were you doing this morning, that led to such a regrettable injury?” 

“Uh,” Gideon froze, speared by the sudden thrust of the conversation. “Nothing,” she tried. 

Magnus chuckled good-naturedly, like he was in on the joke. “Oh, so many things get broken doing ‘nothing’. Must be why idle hands are the devil’s workshop. But come now, you can tell me. How on earth did you break your poor arm?”

The silence was thick among the other students, who all instinctively understood the need to lie to authority. Gideon wondered if she should straight up tell Magnus the cover story about the construction zone, or if a normal honest student who fell into a construction hole would try to keep that a secret. Was she supposed to lie about the lie? This spy stuff was hard. Stupid Harrow. “I fell,” she managed. There. Nice and neutral. 

“You fell,” Magnus said gravely. 

Gideon nodded. 

“Do you fall often?” he prompted.

Gideon seized this excuse. “Yup. I’m really clumsy. In fact if you ever see me a bit beaten up, it’s probably my fault because I fell or walked into something.”

“Gideon, Gideon,” Magnus sighed. “You may as well come clean, I already know what you were up to.” Gideon stared at him, her blood suddenly ice cold in her veins. Did he know about the great robot heist? But then he continued and she managed to breathe again. “The security cameras clearly show you and Nurse Hect going down towards the construction area, where students are expressly forbidden from being, and returning dirty and injured. A further examination of the construction zone shows boards still propped against the side where, I suspect, a resourceful student made a ramp to escape. It’s perfectly clear what happened.”

“Oh, uh. Yeah. You got me,” Gideon muttered.

“I expected a bit more sensibility from you, Camilla.” Magnus turned his paternal frown on her.

“Sorry, sir,” Camilla said, managing to sound not only unrepentant but also completely unconcerned. 

“Indeed.” Magnus turned his gaze back to Gideon. “Next time the urge seizes you explore the campus, or to practice sparring with your peers, please make sure you do it in the proper facilities. It’s much safer to play in the gyms than out on the walls, or in large holes.”

Gideon flushed, feeling like she had absolutely been caught doing something, even though she totally actually hadn’t. Or, she had, but that was the whole point. And yet there was just a hint of disappointment in Magnus’ gentle reproach that made her feel ashamed of letting him down. “I won’t do it again,” she promised dutifully. 

“Excellent,” Magnus said, brightening up again. “I just want you all to have a good and safe time here at Canaan. You’ll get more out of sparring in the gyms anyway. The Seventh has an excellent playback system for analyzing mistakes.”

“Oh, I didn’t join the Seventh. I’m in the Ninth house,” Gideon said.

That seemed to be the first thing to actually surprise Magnus so far that morning. “My goodness. Are you really? Remarkable. Good for you. Er. Well then.” He rose and straightened his cable knit sweater. “I trust you’ll keep an eye on the injury, Camilla?”

Camilla nodded. “We’ll bring her to the clinic if she needs it, but it’s a simple case. She should be fine with a bit of rest.”

“Excellent!” Magnus rubbed his hands together. “Well then if that’s all the excitement for today, I should let Abigail know that this has been handled. Have fun, you two,” he added to the Fourth teens before abandoning them utterly and leaving them standing awkwardly in a room full of people much older than they were.

Gideon and Jeannemary stared at each other for a moment before Jeannemary blurted out “I’m sorry! We didn’t mean to get you in trouble! We were just worried!”

“It’s ok,” Gideon said. “Seriously, don’t sweat it. I’m not even in trouble, I just got the old don’t-do-it-again thing.That’s no big deal.”

“Stop freaking out,” Isaac told Jeannemary quietly.

“I’m not?” she snapped back. “I’m having some manners? Unlike you?”

“Wow, rude,” he muttered, then glanced at the adults in the room. “We’ll be off,” he suggested, edging towards the door.

“Wait!” Gideon leaned forward, her elbows on her knees as she looked at the two nervous children. “.... first you gotta tell me where you bought those boots.”

As one, they looked down at the black, buckle-laden combat boots they both wore. They looked at each other, then back at her. “Our boots?”

“Yeah,” Gideon said, waving them over. “I want a pair.”

“Shopping?” Cytherea said in delight, leaning in. 

“What else am I gonna do today?” Gideon shrugged. “Hey, JM, grab my tablet off my desk, would you? I’m gonna make some impulse purchases.”

“Those are the best kind,” Cytherea said, scooting over on the couch and patting the spot between her and Gideon so Isaac would sit there. 

JM came out of Gideon’s room looking somewhat flustered, but was still helpful with her suggestions as she and Isaac sat beside Gideon and guided her through several online punk retailers. Boots were summarily purchased, as well as pants with more buckles and chains than you could ever need, black jackets that looked like they might start yelling out the slogans on their brightly coloured patches, and a selection of comfortable but spiky accessories. 

“You should get the red ones,” Jeannemary insisted.

Gideon shook her head. “I’m in Ninth now and they’re all goth, so I wanna stay in the blacks. Is goth punk a thing? Whatever, I’ll make it a thing.”

“It’s a thing,” Isaac assured her seriously. 

“Cool,” Gideon muttered, scanning pages of images. “Oh man, I wonder what Harrow would think of these boots. I wish she was still here. Or these! I bet she’d call ‘em frivolous or something.” Nevermind that the boots seemed prepared to go to war with a tank, Gideon thought, passing the tablet to Jeannemary to show her. She took a long drink of water, thinking of the row of delicate shoes in Harrow’s room.

“Is Harrow your girlfriend?” Jeannemary asked innocently, perusing the boots.

Gideon spat water clear across the room in a great spray of what-the-fuck. The outraged shriek of Dulcinea was drowned out by Gideon’s sudden coughing fit. Cytherea was laughing and Palamedes yelled Gideon’s name in protest, rising to get Dulcinea a towel. Isaac was pounding Gideon on the back and Jeannemary was hollering her apologies, once again on her feet and looking mortified. 

Gideon waved Isaac away, but accidentally hit his arm with her broken one, which sent a spasm of pain through her that dropped her back onto the couch, her shout of pain interrupted by more choking and coughing.

“I think that’s a ‘no’,” Camilla said from the kitchen, and sipped her soda.


	11. The Catacombs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time for Harrow's point of view.

“What are you doing?”

Ortus’ voice was aggressively petulant, and Harrow’s teeth ground together at the sound of it. It was a bitter irony that the person with whom she had the most common cause was one of the least palatable humans in existence, while the person she was constantly at odds with was… 

Her train of thought derailed in self defence. 

Harrow sat back from the laptop’s cramped screen, letting her neck crack as she turned her most quelling glare on Ortus. “I am looking into a possible connection between Gideon’s family and the project.”

Ortus, unfortunately, was unfazed by the death glare. He was unfazed by most human emotions, which made him simultaneously very effective and also incredibly annoying. “We have a mind trapped in a robot, and you’re wasting time with a family tree?”

“It’s hardly unrelated,” she snapped back. “Considering it’s her grandfather. I have reason to suspect that her father was involved in a similar experiment -”

“Harrow,” Ortus interrupted. Another infuriating habit of his. “We have a brain in a jar. Every day that we spend with it in our possession puts us at risk. We need to learn everything we can from it and then get rid of it. You can look up Gideon’s family after that’s done.”

“Then you go study it.” Harrow turned her scowl back to her screen defiantly. “While I do this.”

Ortus was shaking his head. Even when he objected silently, he still interrupted her with his body language. Sometimes she hated him. Other times it was merely a baseline loathing. Right now she could have cheerfully lit him on fire, scraped the ashes into a pile, fused that pile into a rock hard puck of carbon, and then shot the puck into the incandescent abyss of the sun’s gravity well. 

“What,” she said, more of an accusation than a question.

“Robot-human interface is your specialty,” he pointed out with his cursed logic. “I’m not as good with old technology and this interface predates nanotech entirely. I need you to make the ghost talk.”

Harrow slowly flexed her hands, her nails digging into her palms. She recognized the fact that he was, objectively, right. But her goal had always been to protect Gideon. Now, it seemed like not only was Gideon actively interfering with that goal but other events were conspiring against her as well. “I have to know what’s going on in the bigger picture,” she murmured, staring blankly through the high res screen. “It might be relevant to our efforts with the ghost.” 

Ortus’ chair creaked as he wheeled it over beside her. “Tell me what you’re doing, then. We can trade tasks to be more efficient.”

Harrow sighed in resignation, leaning back in her chair to gather her thoughts. They were in one of the theoretical research rooms of the Ninth house, a dark building that could only be accessed by subterranean tunnels. Built underground to protect the labs from various forms of cosmic radiation, it was commonly referred to as ‘the crypt’ or ‘the tomb’ by the students in other houses. 

Which was ridiculous, obviously. It was much more like catacombs. 

"Gideon's father was a cavalier," she said, picking her words with care. "I didn't consider, before, whether or not he was also active in any of the ongoing Ascension research but it seems likely, given what we've learned, that experimenting on the Cavaliers began before your arrival at Canaan. What if they were trialling early nanotech twenty five, thirty years ago?"

"That's before viable integration protocols were published," Ortus protested.

Harrow raised an admonishing finger at him. "Published. These could have been in-house trials."

"It's possible, I guess." Ortus scratched at his gut. He was so obviously uncomfortable with his extra weight, but it was the explanation he had chosen for why he was dropping out of the cav program. Harrow thought it was unnecessary dramatics, personally. Ortus was very dramatic though. He had missed his calling as a Seventh House aesthete.

"There's no evidence of it," Harrow continued. "But I have so little information on him. I know his name was Allen Nav, and that he married a climatologist named Lenore Poe. They signed up for a three year tour at the Antarctic Research facility so she could study ice core radiation records and then they died in a freak blizzard. Gideon was two."

"That's not much to go on," Ortus sighed, but he turned back to his own monitor. "Let me see what I can find about this guy. And his wife. Maybe one of them really was a research subject. But meanwhile we have an  _ actual  _ research subject sitting on our desk, so do you think you might be persuaded to pay attention to it?"

"Fine," she grumbled, and minimized the search window on her screen, bringing up the robotics interface instead. 

She had faithfully told Ortus all she knew about Gideon's father. What she had not said was the truth about Gideon. 

When Allen and Lenore Nav had left the lab to check on a stalled core drill, it had been a clear summer day. Nice enough that they had given in to Gideon's toddler whining and taken her with them, bundled up on the motorsled. The blizzard had blown in out of nowhere- allegedly, Harrow reminded herself. She had always found it very suspicious that a weather front that large and dense would not have been spotted by the satellites that her own mother controlled. But that was not a safe kind of suspicion, nor did it matter at this point. Whether it was a lie or an error, the entire Nav family had been caught in a white-out snowstorm. 

Their bodies were found the next morning. They were huddled under the flipped over motorsled. Her father held her mother, facing him, with little Gideon in the middle, bundled in the blanket. There was no way a snowsuit and blanket should have been able to save a toddler from the cold of the Antarctic night but there she was: alive, and about ten pounds lighter. Her toddler chubbiness had melted away, and she looked like a malnourished street orphan. She had eaten four times her normal amount for a month afterwards as she put the weight back on. 

This was all according to snippets that Harrow had overheard while growing up. She had become an expert eavesdropper by necessity. To her, the truth was obvious: Gideon had nanites inside her that let her control her metabolism. She had burned all her fat stores in twelve hours in order to stay warm.

There was other evidence, too, though nothing so clear. Gideon healed quickly. She was never sick (except for that one time, which was probably a poisoning attempt). She was unnaturally fast and coordinated. She could learn physical skills just by watching people practise them. There must be something in her motor cortex, Harrow thought, or perhaps augmented links between that and the mirror cells in her premoter cortex. Her hypothalamus had been tweaked for sure. Her musculature was exquisite. And she was so fucking  _ noble _ , a perfect honourable soldier from the cradle. There must be something to it, to make Gideon so strong, so capable. 

_ I am your sword, my Lady. _

Harrow clenched her hand around the searing memory of Gideon's fingers pressed against it as she swore to obey her. She felt uncomfortably warm, and blamed the terrible circulation of air in the crypt. It couldn't be that she was getting all heated about having Gideon in her room. In her bed.

_ Tell me a story, Nonagesimus.  _

She recalled how soft Gideon's stupid, spiky hair had been as she stroked it, watching her sleep. Gideon with her broken arm. Broken because of Harrow's orders.

_ Start at the beginning. _

But how could she? It was an impossible story to tell. Gideon would hate her more than ever before, if she even believed it at all. 

You can't just tell someone "I've been pretending to hate you all along." It sounded like nothing more than a self serving lie, which was no doubt why Gideon had recoiled so violently when Harrow brushed the barest surface of the iceberg of her feelings.

Gideon's reaction had made it clear: Harrow couldn't just come out and admit that her own parents terrified her. That she had always been forced to act the part of a perfect spiteful scientist, because she was so afraid that they would treat her the way they treated Gideon. She couldn't explain how she discovered early (so early, how old had she been? five? Six? It was after she had learned the lesson to never write down an honest thought, thank god) that the closer she got to Gideon, the worse her parents treated Gideon. How she observed that when she was dismissive and spiteful and awful towards The Orphan, her parents laughed and left Gideon alone. She couldn't just say all that. 

She couldn't say "I was afraid of what my parents would do if they knew."

Because then Gideon, like the idiot of a paladin that she was, would just say, "knew what?"

And Harrow couldn't ever admit that she had loved Gideon from the start.

\-----

It was barely an hour later when Ortus rose to the challenge of disappointing Harrow more than she had thought possible (which was an impressive feat since she already gave him a great deal of credit in that regard). 

“There’s nothing about either of them anywhere,” he said abruptly, pushing back from his computer. 

Harrow’s nimble fingers froze above her keys. “What.”

“Oh I found a few old publications from her mom,” he shrugged. “Mostly about radiation and fertility, and synergy between the fallout kind and the broad spectrum UV kind, but yeah. Nothing about integration at all.”

“And you spent this entire time searching?” Harrow let the scorn and skepticism wash through her voice, wishing they could scour away the indifference in Ortus’ dark eyes. He was immune to her scorn, though not in a way she could respect. He didn't resist it, he simply didn’t care what she thought, which was clearly poor judgement on his part. 

“I’m not an archivist,” he said. “I’m not a librarian or a historian, I don’t have access to anything older than twenty five years, because it’s not supposed to be relevant to my courses. So no, I didn’t find anything.”

Harrow slammed the Escape key. Her program closed and she rose in a hiss of tulle. “You’re not an archivist,” she repeated dismally.

“No, and neither are you. You won’t do any better than I did,” he pointed out. “So you may as well - hey! Where are you going?”

The look she gave him from the doorway was one she had learned from her mother, and it stopped him in his tracks. “To find an archivist, obviously.” And she left him before he could irritate her further.

\---

Palamedes Mandelbrot Sextus, Third Heir to the Sextus fortune and certified genius, was sitting on the couch enjoying a beer when Harrow found him. Camilla was sitting next to him, which was fortunate, because the most visually distracting thing that Harrow had ever encountered in her life was occurring on the couch opposite and she did not want to be distracted right now. Harrow halted at the edge of the carpet, between the two couches, and firmly put her back to where Dulcinea was painting Gideon’s toenails black.

“I’m interrupting,” Harrow said.

Camilla took one look at Harrow and merely finished her tea in one long pull, clearly sensing that relaxing time was over.

“The interruption is not unwelcome,” Sextus said with a smile. “Why don’t you join us?”

Harrow shook her head. “No, I-”

“Hey! Harrow,” Gideon interrupted carelessly. “Check it out! Dulcie is painting my toes!”

Harrow tensed every muscle in her body, exerting her considerable willpower to remain facing away from that very thing. A sharp pang of jealousy twisted around her trachea at the way Gideon said  _ Dulcie, _ the way she spoke the sweet nickname of the beautiful Seventh girl with such familiar affection. She crushed the jealousy. It was stupid anyway; Dulcinea was hopelessly smitten with Palamedes, and regardless, she wasn’t Gideon’s type. 

“They’re gonna be all black,” Gideon continued blithely. “I figure it’ll fit the theme. Ya know?” 

She sounded so pleased, so unguarded and happy. “What theme?” Harrow muttered, and despite her better judgement, turned her face towards the sun of Gideon’s smile. 

Gideon was lounging comfortably on the sofa, wearing slacks rolled up to her knees and a sleeveless shirt. Both were black, but unlike the clothing she had always worn before,  _ these _ clothes fit her. The pants curved around her muscular thighs, and the tank top was the kind that included an absolutely useless shelf-bra. It hugged Gideon’s sides, and her flat stomach. Her bare arm was stretched along the back of the sofa, the muscles thrown into relief by the cheap overhead lighting. The other arm was, of course, in a sling in front of her. “Y’know, the goth theme. Ninth House, black as night. Colour is for chumps.”

“Your nails would look so pretty in a bronze,” Dulcinea sighed. She was sitting on a cushion at Gideon’s feet, bent over her toes like some kind of handmaiden.

Harrow dragged her eyes away from the sight of black nails on Gideon’s bare feet and met her golden gaze. “Why is Dulcinea painting your toes?”

“Cause I only got one hand?” Gideon said it with a grin, clearly amused at Harrow’s reaction. She had expected the scorn, of course. It was why Harrow twisted her lip in a sneer, now. This was an old, old dance of theirs. The only dance they had ever been permitted. 

“Enjoy your frivolity,” she said coldly. “I’m afraid I won’t be joining you. I’m busy.” She wished she could join her, though. She wished it was her ‘hanging out’. Talking casually. Painting Gideon’s nails. Feeling the heat of her skin against her hands again. Gideon was always so warm. And everything else, everyone else, had always been so cold. 

“You should relax,” Gideon said. 

“You’re doing enough of that for both of us,” Harrow snapped. 

“You told me I couldn’t help you today,” Gideon pointed out, and now, there, Harrow could hear the genuine irritation. “You said I had to rest and recover! Don’t go getting pissy about me sitting on my ass now.”

Harrow crossed her arms tightly, doubling down. “You could use this time gainfully. Just because you’re not punching rocks and kicking trees doesn’t mean you should be completely idle. Try reading something - other than the  _ articles _ in your  _ magazines _ . You might actually expand your mind. It certainly couldn’t get any smaller.”

“Oh, sure, I got a book right here,” Gideon said, reaching into her pocket with her good hand. She pulled out her middle finger, fully extended. “It’s called ‘Fuck you, Harrow.’ A novel by Gideon Nav.”

Dulcinea snorted quietly, and Harrow saw some of the tension ease from Gideon’s shoulders. A win, then. She spun away, letting Gideon have it, and looked back to Palamedes and Camilla.

“You needed something?” Palamedes asked mildly.

“I need to speak with you both privately,” she said, hyper aware of the main room surveillance. She had gone over her own room thoroughly, using three different techniques for detecting electronic surveillance, and was at least partially convinced the rooms themselves were safe. There was perhaps still some sort of ethics board that did not want teenagers being recorded in states of undress, or worse, canoodling. 

Camilla was already rising, and Palamedes nodded, unsurprised. 

“We can use my room,” Camilla suggested. It was furthest from the nail polish party so Harrow nodded quickly. She needed to stay focused. Camilla was good for that, she always seemed to know what to do. 

Palamedes closed the door behind them once they were inside, and motioned for Harrow to take the desk chair. 

She just shook her head, too wound up to sit. “I’m working on a research project and I’ve hit a dead end,” she began, not wasting time. “I’ve been looking into Gideon’s family. Her father was a Cavalier, and I have reason to believe he might have been involved with the Ascension project.”

Palamedes arched his eyebrows in surprise at that. “Does Gideon know?”

Harrow nodded once. “She suspected it. I promised I’d look into it.”

“Why isn’t she in here, then?” Camilla asked.

“Because Dulcie is painting her toes,” Harrow said sourly. “It’s fine. I’ll tell her later.”

Harrow, and the Sixth with her, were in a strange position. Palamedes had figured out the existence of the Ascension project - the attempt to achieve immortality by fusing a real life to an artificial one - through his own means. He and Harrow, and later Ortus, had met online three years ago, while investigating each of their own information trails. It was only by taking the leap of trusting each other that they had pieced together as much as they did. It had helped that Ortus was a Cavalier at Canaan already, because they strongly suspected that the entire project was based somewhere on campus. Harrow and Palamedes had arranged to join Ortus at the school when they were old enough for their parents to allow it. 

Now they were here.

Harrow trusted Ortus, she trusted Palamedes, she trusted Camilla, and she very badly wanted to trust Gideon with everything she had learned. The problem was that Gideon was incredibly principled, even if she herself didn’t realize it. Also, Gideon was incapable of lying convincingly in a reliable fashion. And, of course, there was always the chance their group would be discovered and arrested (or, more likely, killed quietly). The very idea of exposing Gideon to that kind of risk was hideous, so Harrow still wasn’t sure how much to tell her. 

“I take it this is because your soul in a jar is identifying itself as Gideon senior?” Camilla said with a thoughtful expression. “That seems like a bit of a stretch. We haven’t found any evidence to point to Gideon’s father other than he went to this university too. That would make sense, if his own father was an alumnus.”

“But he wasn’t just a student,” Harrow said. “He was a Cavalier.”

“The Cavalier program is a separate endeavour,” Palamedes pointed out. “It’s well-known and publicly funded.”

“Ortus suspects they might have come from the same original lab,” Harrow reminded him. “If a Cavalier graduates with honours, they get the prize of being monitored by nanites for the rest of their days. What if that wasn’t always just to observe peak human performance? What if it was linked to integration?”

Palamedes looked unhappy. “Is this about Cytherea?”

The look that Harrow shot him was quelling. It was a sore point between them. Not Cytherea specifically, but the fact that he wanted to broaden their circle and trust more people with the secret. Until recently, she had been adamantly against the idea. Now it would be hypocritical of her to refuse entirely, since she intended to bring Gideon into the project. But Cytherea was an entirely different matter. “You can’t trust someone who’s been riddled with nanites.”

“She got rid of them,” he pointed out.

“Allegedly,” Harrow retorted. “How would she know?”

“We’re getting off topic,” Camilla said, cutting off the pointless rehash of an old argument. “Cytherea has given us valuable information and doesn’t want to know what we’re up to anyway. She knows she’s a security risk. Get back to Gideon, though. Why does her father matter now?”

Harrow paused, about to answer, and suddenly froze. She realized that she had shot herself in the foot, here. “Because…” she forced out. “...Gideon might also be riddled with nanites.”

Palamedes dropped the pen he had been fidgeting with. It rolled to the floor unnoticed as he stared at her. “What? What makes you think so? Is this recent?”

She was already shaking her head. “I believe she was born with some kind of self-preservation lattice integrated into her brainstem and metabolic pathways.”

“Are you telling me,” Camilla interrupted, “that she actually does heal quickly?”

Harrow nodded. “And she can regulate her metabolism very closely. Almost deliberately. I’ve observed her doing it, when she was trying to keep her temper, or if she got cold. She can rein herself in, when she chooses to. And when we were cold she could just…. Warm up.” Harrow shrugged, realizing that it sounded odd. “She also survived spending the night outside when it was 80 degrees below zero. She was two.”

“What the hell was going on at your research facility?” Camilla demanded.

“Her entire family got caught in a freak blizzard,” Harrow said, repeating the old story. “Her parents died in it. Gideon was found the next morning, with no damage. Her body had burned all of its fat reserves to stay alive. Her core temperature was absurdly low but, again, no damage. It was like she hibernated.”

“Humans don’t hibernate,” Palamedes said absently, rising from the bed to pace around the small space.

“Gideon did,” Harrow muttered, leaning back against the wall so Sextus wouldn’t bump into her.

“Fascinating,” he said.

“And she was a toddler?” Camilla repeated.

Harrow nodded. “She was born at the research lab, though her mother was pregnant with her when they arrived. I think she must have been born with nanites.”

“Then why do you suspect her father?” Camilla asked.

Harrow stared at her. “Because he was a Cavalier.”

“Wouldn’t it make way more sense that she inherited the nanites from her mother?” Camilla said.

Harrow exchanged a rapid glance with Palamedes. They both already knew that Camilla was right. It made a thousand times more sense that a fetus would inherit blood-born technology from its mother than its father. 

“What did her mother do?” Palamedes asked.

“She was a climatologist,” Harrow answered automatically. “She was studying radiation traces in ice core samples. And,” she continued as she remembered what Ortus had found out, “fertility.”

“Fertility?” Palamedes straightened, his face lighting up like he had found a neat clue in a mystery game. “Planetary fertility? Individual fertility?”

“Getting implanted with nanite babies fertility?” Camilla asked dryly.

Harrow shook her head. “I don’t know,” she admitted, annoyed and impatient all over again. “Ortus said she studied the synergy of leftover fallout from the war and the increase in ultraviolet radiation, and how they affect fertility. For all I know she was researching plants.”

“Well, then.” Palamedes spread his hands. “It appears as though we have two persons of interest to investigate. Her father, who might have had Cavalier nanites, and her mother, who may have had something else entirely.”

Camilla grinned, a satisfied and slightly unpleasant expression. “Time to break into the archives.”


	12. Perfectly Fine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gideon is perfectly fine.

Gideon sat on the couch, her feet up on the coffee table, playing her favourite tablet game (it was a lovely day in the village, and she was a horrible goose). She waited with patience born of long practice, snacking from her box of cookies that said GIDEON’S on it, and constantly being distracted by her own fingernails. The dark spots of nail polish were annoyingly eye-catching, as if she had weird stuff stuck to each finger. Which, in a way, she did. 

The Sixth pair and Harrow had been tucked away in Cam’s bedroom all morning, plotting what was no doubt cool and illegal stuff to do. Gideon hadn’t been invited in - fine, whatever - but she was sitting in wait for Harrow to come out so she could shake some answers out of that pointed little face.

She was staring at the ceiling, mentally ranking how annoying bones were to break (“arm” was worse than “finger” but way better than “clavicle”) when someone knocked heavily on the door. 

Gideon rolled to her feet, grateful for the mad excitement of literally anything at all happening. “Comin’,” she called, wondering if the plotting trio had ordered lunch. She opened the door to reveal a big, soft-looking goth boy. His face looked like someone had kneaded dough to make bread and just sorta left it there. He was dressed in ill-fitting black clothing, which looked so bad on him that she retroactively regretted all the ill-fitting black clothing she had ever worn, even though she made it look good. But the important thing was that he was holding a big paper bag with the Eastasian take-out place’s logo on it. 

The guy made no move to hand it to her though. “You’re Gideon Nav,” he said, his dark eyes sunken beneath heavy brows. 

“Yeah?” She looked him up and down. “... who’re you?”

“Ortus Nigenad.” 

She fell back a step in surprise, and he weaseled his way into the apartment. “You’re Ortus?” she repeated, incredulous. Could this guy even do a pushup? He looked like he would whimper at the sight of a stationary staircase.

“That’s what I said.” His gaze was intelligent but disdainful as he took her in. “Well, you’re certainly prime Cavalier material,” he added, making it sound like an insult. 

“Yeah, well, you’re certainly not,” she shot back. “Why are you in my house?”

“Nonagesimus called me over. Where is she? Her room?” He glanced around, like the whole apartment had been prepared for his judgement and he found it lacking.

“No, you’re not going in her room,” Gideon blurted. “I mean she’s not in her room! She’s in Cam’s. HARROW,” she hollered, crossing the apartment in long, agitated strides to pound on Camilla’s door. “Open up!”

It was Camilla who opened the door, and her tense posture visibly relaxed as she spotted Ortus behind Gideon. She rolled her eyes and stepped aside. “Relax, Gideon. Ortus, come on in.”

This was especially unfair. “Harrow,” Gideon said, and she wasn’t whining. “Did you order lunch for the cool kids room and not even get me any?”

“I didn’t know you were still here,” Harrow said, taking Cam’s place at the door as Ortus made himself right the hell at home with the sixth kids. Why did he even know them? He was giving them little takeout boxes and Palamedes even gave him a thank you smile. 

“I was on the couch the whole time,” Gideon said, her scowl snapping back to Harrow.

“I heard Protesilaus and Cytherea join you and Dulcinea earlier,” Harrow shrugged. “I thought you had gone to lunch with the Seventh,” she shrugged. 

“Yeah, well, I didn’t.” It was true the Seventh kids had all come to visit that morning, and they had invited her to lunch. She would have gone with them in a heartbeat but she had been busy lurking on the couch waiting to pounce on Harrow, which just made her more annoyed with all of this. She could have been flirting with cuties and eating baguettes, and now she was being ignored and denied take-out instead! “Can I come in or what?” Gideon pressed. 

Harrow frowned. “I don’t think that’s a good idea yet.”

“Can we get started?” Ortus called pointedly at Harrow’s back.

Gideon’s face flushed and the look she gave Harrow was challenging. “Can I yell at you in private for a minute?”

“Why would you yell at her?” Ortus asked, disapproving, as Pal tried to shush him.

To Gideon’s intense and eternal relief, Harrow heaved a little sigh and came out into the apartment, shutting Cam’s door behind her. “My room,” she said, stepping around Gideon and gliding through the kitchen to her own door.

Her room was as immaculate and ornate as ever, and Gideon immediately crossed the short space to sit heavily on the side of the bed. “You’ve been ignoring me all morning,” she began.

“You were busy getting a mani-pedi from the Seventh,” Harrow retorted, her arms tightly crossed.

Gideon suppressed the urge to shake her. “That took five minutes! You promised me some answers when you came back.” 

“No,” Harrow corrected her, “I promised you answers  _ tonight _ . It is only the afternoon.”

“Because you thought you’d be gone all day learning things!” Gideon planted a fist on the silky blankets and leaned forward. “You figured something out, didn’t you? Now you guys are plotting! And it’s about me, isn’t it?”

“About you?” Harrow’s face was blank as a wall.

“About my family! Whatever! Don’t you think I have the right to know what it is?” That demand seemed to put a crack in the wall, and Gideon pressed her advantage. “How would you feel if you were me? And I was keeping secrets about you, from you? You’d be pissed as hell!”

“That would never happen, though, for two reasons.” Harrow looked much more certain of herself, which clearly meant she was about to be high-handed and annoying. “First, you’d much rather throw that sort of thing in my face than gloat quietly. You could never keep a secret to yourself.”

“I’d like to throw something in your face alright,” Gideon muttered.

“Secondly,” Harrow continued, “and this is important, you are a terrible liar, Nav.”

“What!” Gideon felt mightily offended at this for some reason. “I can lie!”

“Can you?” Harrow’s eyebrow rose in challenge. “What did you have for breakfast this morning?”

“I- uh,” Gideon blinked, thrown for a loop. “Toast with - honey!”

“It was toast with jam,” Harrow said.

“That doesn’t count! You saw the dirty plate and the jam on the counter,” Gideon protested. “You made fun of me for not cleaning them up 0.2 seconds after they were used.”

“Exactly,” Harrow said, a little smirk on her lips. “You already knew that I knew what you ate and it didn’t even occur to you to take that into account. You could have said toast with jam and cookies, and I might have believed you. Also, you hesitated when I asked you.”

“Well I didn’t expect to have to lie about that,” Gideon said. “Who lies about breakfast?”

“Who indeed? Face it, Griddle, you’re an honest soul. It’s normally a commendable trait but I can’t tell you certain things yet, because I don’t want the world to know.”

Gideon’s face flushed in frustration. “Oh, and I suppose Nigenoodle is a good liar?”

Harrow frowned at her. “Ortus is a capable one, yes. He can keep things to himself, and he’s not riled easily. Unlike some people.”

“He’s an ass,” Gideon muttered, looking away from Harrow. The entire room was basically an extension of Harrow though, so that wasn’t entirely possible. “And a dingus.”

“You just met him.”

“Yeah and I can already tell that he’s a dingus.” Gideon ran her good hand through her hair, making an effort to control her breathing. “Why are we fighting?” she asked after a moment, glancing back to Harrow.

Harrowhark was watching her closely. “Are we fighting?”

“Feels like it,” Gideon said, not looking away.

Harrow dropped her gaze first this time. “Then it’s because you want me to tell you something, and I’m not. That shouldn’t be new, Nav.”

“But it’s about me,” Gideon said. “.... am I okay?”

“You’re perfect,” Harrow said immediately. “Perfectly fine, I mean,” she added quickly as Gideon’s eyes widened.

“Hah!” Gideon laughed, relaxing, and leaned back on her good hand. “You said I was perfect!”

“Oh, shut up!” Harrow scowled.

Gideon suddenly felt lighter, like a tight band had been released from her ribs. “I don’t have to shut up, I’m perfect.”

“Perfectly  _ annoying _ ,” Harrow hissed.

“Hey, I’ve had lots of practise annoying you,” Gideon bragged. “Figures I’d be perfect at that too.”

“Was that all? I’m trying to get work done.” Harrow’s tone was as arid as the desert she had been born in, and twice as cold. 

“I guess I’m perfectly okay for now,” Gideon said airily.

“God, you’re going to be insufferable about this, aren’t you?”

“Oh yeah,” Gideon grinned. “I’m gonna be able to ride it for like, at least a week.”

“Get out of my room, Nav.”

“Maybe two!” Gideon slid to her feet, still smiling and feeling light. Instead of walking past Harrow, she stepped right up to her, making Harrow step back and bump into the wall. “But tell me, O Dread Princess of the Ice Desert,” she continued, speaking quietly, her smirk close to Harrow’s own tightly-pressed together lips, “are you still going to tell me your secrets tonight?”

Harrow looked up at her like a trapped bird, and it was infinitely more satisfying then being smirked down on. Harrow licked her lips, then nodded. “I should be able to tell you something tonight,” she hedged. “But I can’t tell you everything yet, Nav. Believe me, I’d like to. It’s just not safe.”

“Cause I’m too perfect,” Gideon agreed. And then, because she loved winning, and being a little shit, she caught Harrow’s hand in hers and brought it to her lips, pressing a little smooch to the back of her gloved knuckles. “Catch ya later, then, Sugarlips.”

\---

Gideon went back to her own room with a pleasant buzz of victory, only to have the warm rosy feeling shattered by her insistently buzzing tablet. Her heart froze and fell into her gut as she saw the reminder on the screen:

CAVALIER ORIENTATION: GYM K. 15:30

TRAINER: AIGLAMENE PENTECOST

Gideon’s head snapped up to the wall clock. 15:24. 

“ _ Shitfuckshit. _ ” Gideon snatched up her gym bag and careened through the living room, smashing her feet into her running shoes and letting the door slam behind her. She ignored the elevator in the hall because the very idea of  _ stopping _ to  _ wait _ for it to show up repelled her so hard she had to flip off the elevator door as she ran by. The emergency exit stairwell at the end of the hall yielded to her hip-check and she took the stairs down to the first floor two at a time, leaping the last four steps in each half-floor section. The door at the bottom opened into the lobby (but you couldn’t open it  _ from  _ the lobby, only when you were leaving the building, which was stupid) and Gideon pelted through the glass doors in the entryway to the paved pathways beyond. 

All of these pieces of terrain kept coming and did not stop coming. Gideon had had some notion that Gym K was fairly close by but now that she was actually trying to race the clock to get there she kept running into chunks of path and random stairs and inconvenient outbuildings that her mental map had completely glossed over. She realized, as the clock tower chimed the half hour and also her doom, that she was going to have to get used to actual distance, and the incredibly inconvenient concept that it took time to move through it. 

She got to Gym K at 15:42, out of breath and sweaty, looking like an idiot in her tank top and sneakers with no socks. She clung to her bag and to the faint hope that her fresh cast might inspire just a little bit of pity in her trainer. 

Her cast did not inspire pity in her trainer.

The woman waiting for Gideon at the gym entrance - oh god she was holding a clipboard - had a presence that hit Gideon’s psyche like a truck before stopping to back up over her ego. The trainer’s face was badly scarred on one side, with pockmarks and tight skin covering her left cheek and temple. She looked ancient - at  _ least _ forty years old - and as she turned to survey Gideon with a flat stare Gideon noticed that one of her legs was a bionic replacement, apparently up to the hip. 

Gideon skidded to a stop in front of her and stared. 

“Are you Gideon Nav?” the woman snapped. 

Gideon barely -  _ barely  _ \- managed to not-salute. “Yes ma’am.”

“You’re late.”

Gideon nodded quickly. “I really am. Super sorry, won’t happen again.”

A silence hung between them as this warrior queen looked her over. Gideon frantically tried to think of the right thing to say but it was too late, she was at the bad ending, and the only dialogue options she had to choose from were “Errrhhh” or “Uhhh” or “Nrgrgll.”

The woman abruptly nodded. “Well at least you didn’t give me some kind of god awful excuse like the last one. I will never care why you’re late, is that clear?”

“I’ll never be late again,” Gideon promised fervently. 

“Good. Now, you were twelve minutes late, so go back out through those doors and run around the track twelve times before you come back in. Then we can start.”

Gideon was in awe. The punishment made so much sense. And it was something she could do pretty easily, really. “Can I change first, Ma’am?”

“You’re supposed to be  _ ready _ when you come and see me. I’m not going to wait while you do your nails in the changeroom. Go change but that’s another three laps. Oh, and kid?”

Gideon stared at her, wide-eyed. “Yeah?”

“You don’t call your trainer  _ ma’am _ when you’re a cav. You’ll call me Aggie.”


	13. Cam knows what to do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harrow's phone call. Cam's good call.

It was hours later when Gideon, exhausted and still in awe, stepped out of the elevator into the third floor hall. Aggie was  _ awesome. _ She had been a Cavalier on the front lines in the Eastasia campaign  _ and _ the Northam campaign and was definitely the absolute coolest trainer in the entire world, ever. 

“Sorry Kiki, you imaginary girl,” Gideon mumbled to herself. “It was good while it lasted but no one motivates like a war vet yelling ‘is that all you got you goddamn penguin’.”

Gideon had pushed herself hard to impress Aggie (she would have pushed herself harder except that Aggie called her a goddamn idiot for endangering the use of her arm blah blah blah so she had stopped). There was no one else in the world she wanted to impress as badly. She couldn’t wait to tell Harrow that Aggie had said she was in the top percentile for all the measures, too! Then maybe Harrow could tell her what a percentile was, exactly.

As she reached for the door it opened on its own, and Gideon had to awkwardly back up a step as Cam came out. 

“Oh, hey,” she greeted her. 

“You survived,” Cam noted, holding the door for her.

“Yeah, it was awesome,” Gideon said. “You got class?”

“Not today. I’m meeting Palamedes at the House library. Later.”

“Ciao,” Gideon said, and went into the apartment. She heard Cam call “it’s pronounced ‘chow’!” from the hall but the door closed, sparing her the need to answer. 

Gideon worked off her sneakers with the lazy inefficiency of someone who was really tired, leaning against the wall. The apartment was quiet, and for a second she thought that no one else was home and she was debating the wisdom of having a nap at suppertime again, but then she heard Harrow’s muffled voice. She approached her door on sock feet and realized that it was open a crack. 

“It was probably my roommate leaving,” Harrow said in an annoyed tone. 

Gideon paused, frozen by confusion. Who was she talking to? Was it Ortus? Was Ortus in her room, annoying her? Could Gideon fight him? But then Harrow was continuing her one-sided conversation and Gideon realized she must be on the phone.

“No, not Gideon, a different roommate… No…. I don’t know, at the gym, probably, lifting heavy things and putting them down again. Why does it even matter?”

Gideon hesitated outside Harrow’s door. She should poke her head in and say hi. 

“Of course I’m keeping an eye on her,” Harrow said.

No, Gideon thought, she should stay perfectly still and listen.

“Yes, Mother,” Harrow continued, her voice growing even frostier. “No, Mother, not at all… No, that’s not necessary… That’s not a secret!… Apparently I don’t  _ have _ to tell you, since you seem to have transcripts of everything I say!” 

There was a tense pause and then Harrow ground her teeth so hard Gideon winced from the hallway. Her father must have gotten on the phone. Only he could make Harrow’s teeth sound like someone was squeezing a handful of glass marbles together.

“It is not a question of filial duty,” Harrow said after a long pause. “The fact is that my classes are extremely demanding, and on top of that I am undergoing a typical psychological development of exploring my independence. I did not try to keep secrets from you, I just did not think it especially urgent to call and tell you that Gideon was a cav in my house. She would still have been a cav next weekend at my planned letter home. The fact that you called immediately shows - fine! That you called the day after you heard - shows a lack of trust! … You’re acting like you caught me at a deception!… If you know I’m not trying to be deceptive then I have to wonder at why you’re both so angry… Yes, angry… Perhaps because you’re not my top priority at the moment? Is it so shocking to be bumped to second place over your grown daughter’s studies?” 

There was another long pause, then Harrow made a little gasp like she had been gravely insulted. “Of course I have not forgotten,” she spat into the phone, probably flaying the person on the other end through the sheer cutting force of her tone. 

Gideon hoped it was still her dad on the line, he could use a good flaying. But then that thought vanished because Harrow continued. 

“You remind me constantly. You allowed me an early entry specifically so I could keep an eye on Nav, and tell you what she was doing. And that is what I am doing, and I would thank you both to trust me to do it! I agreed to be your little spy and you should be thrilled that I manipulated her into being my House’s cav… Of course it was my idea,” she scoffed. “She’s as easy to manipulate as a puppy. I just told her not to, so she did… Exactly… Yes… Yes, thank you, I’m glad you appreciate the effort… Well, practice patience because it will be at least two years before she’s given the Cavalier serum and I have no intention of putting up with aggressive phone calls every second day until that happens. I will let you know something urgently if it’s relevant for you to urgently know it. Otherwise I’d appreciate it if you didn’t interrupt my own studies just to check on your pet project… I don’t know, Father. Do I?… Do I matter to you!… Well that is a relief… Indeed. Can I go now? … Of course… Yes… yes… I know… yes… can I go NOW?… Fine… yes… FINE… GoodBYE.”

Gideon stood frozen against the wall, stunned. Tight bands constricted her chest and pain pressed at her temples.  _ Easy to manipulate as a puppy. _ Her hands shook. Inside the room Harrow drew a shuddering breath and Gideon braced herself, waiting for Harrow to walk out. She wanted her to walk out. Wanted her to come and see what she had done, learn that she had been discovered. She wanted a fight.

The angry screamcore sounds of Uberdeath suddenly blared from the room, and there was a layer of vocals over them as though a female vocalist had joined the lead singer. Or as if a girl was screaming into a pillow.

A fresh wave of uncertainty made Gideon unclench her fists. The will to fight drained out of her and she turned, slowly and silently, and started to go back towards her own room. She opened and closed the front door on the way, loudly, and gave her bag a kick like she had just come home. Maybe Harrow would come out. Maybe she could ask her what the hell was going on. 

Harrow’s door slammed shut, and the music was muted.

Gideon stood in the living room, staring through the couch. She remembered Harrow’s surprised face when they had first seen each other in the apartment. Had that really only been days ago? It felt like way longer. It had started to feel normal to live with her. And... it hadn’t been… bad. 

She didn’t know what to think anymore. What had Harrow said, back when Gideon had accused her family of planning this out? That she hadn’t known they would be roommates. But then why else would she have waited to register? To make sure Gideon’s registration went in too? But that didn’t make sense, because why would they send her but not Gideon, if she was only sent to keep an eye on Gideon? What did… why would… 

The train of thought ran out of steam and Gideon trudged to her empty room, sitting on her own bed, where there was no sign of Harrow anywhere. It didn’t help. It felt worse, for some reason. 

“Why does this suck so much?” Gideon muttered, her head in her hands as she swallowed back nausea. “This is so stupid!” She had always known Harrow was evil.

I never hated you, Harrow had said.

Maybe not, but she had always been the tool of her parents. Stupid to think that had changed. Stupid. Naive. Like a puppy, Gideon thought with a snort of black humour. “Don’t hold back, Nonageezy, tell us what you really think,” she said to herself. Harrow thought she was an idiot. Sure, Harrow always  _ said  _ so, but the realization that she had meant it hurt worse than any punishment Harrow’s parents had ever meted out. It was one thing to be told she wasn’t wanted by them, that she was slow, that she was useless, but for some reason she couldn’t bear the thought of Harrow feeling the same way. 

Gideon abruptly surged to her feet, because she was absolutely not going to sit on her bed and cry about a narrow-lipped, vulture-faced little bridge troll like Harrowhark Nonagesimus. She put on her shades to hide the red in her eyes and two seconds later she was out the door.

\---

Gideon wandered the campus for most of an hour, hands jammed in her jacket pockets and her new combat boots slamming into the fancy paving stones that had never done anything to her, unlike a certain dark harridan. She avoided the other students, or they avoided her, until finally even stalking around like a surly teen lost its allure. She was too old to be sulking like this. She was twenty-fucking-one, not a Fourth House brat. She paused in the courtyard by the clinic and briefly thought about seeking out the teens because at least  _ they _ thought she was cool. But she didn’t want to be grumpy at them. 

She turned towards the clinic instead, and went in to find the Sixth House library. More specifically, a cav-medic pair that were inside it. 

She found Camilla and Palamedes in the main atrium, where the ceiling was three stories high and topped with a glass dome. The glass was stained glass and full of, for some reason, snakes climbing up sticks. Weird, but she wasn’t here to care about the white marble floors or the steel and glass doors or the way half the people walking around were in lab coats or scrubs. Bunch of nerds. 

Gideon shoved her fists deeper into the pockets of her leather jacket and stomped over to her roommates, tossing her hair slightly to get it out of her eyes. “Hey,” she greeted them.

“Oh, hello, Nav,” Pal said, surprised (but not displeased) to see her. Cam had noticed her coming a mile away and just gave an upnod of greeting. “What brings you here?”

“Uh,” Gideon paused, not sure how to explain what was going on. She wasn't even sure what was going on herself. “I’m… not feeling great?”

“What’s wrong?” they both said together. They didn’t even share a look together or laugh after, either, like this was such a common occurrence that it didn’t even register. They just looked at her, Pal faintly worried and Cam faintly annoyed.

“It’s,” Gideon started, making a vague gesture over the tightness in her chest, then to the headache at her temples. She realized she was making the coo-coo gesture at herself and dropped her hand. “It’s Harrow’s fault,” she blurted, because that, at least, she was sure of.

“Oh. Well. Then.” Palamedes cleared his throat. Cam just heaved a quiet sigh and kind of had that look to her face that she had had before, when Harrow came in and was like ‘I”M INTERRUPTING WAH’ and Cam was like ‘fine goddamn’ and finished her tea. If Cam had had tea then she would have finished it at Gideon, right there in the atrium.

“Let’s go back to the study room,” Camilla suggested, and Palamedes nodded with the slow reluctance of someone who hated that idea but couldn’t find a polite way to refuse it.

“Am I interrupting?” Gideon asked belatedly. She didn’t wanna be a bossy jerk like Harrow. “I can bug you later.”

“No, it’s fine,” Camilla said firmly, already leading them down the hall and back into the library proper. “We just wrapped up a study group session but the room was booked for another half hour. No one will bother us there.”

The study room was a small bare chamber with artificial lighting, a big table, and a dozen chairs arranged crookedly around them. Palamedes took one, sprawling in it as only the truly lanky can. Gideon sat on the edge of the table with her boots on a chair, and Camilla stood by the door, which she locked. The room smelled faintly of beer, and Gideon’s stomach rumbled. 

She pressed a hand to her gut to settle it and looked to the two Sixers. The short walk over here had let her gather her thoughts and now she knew the best way to approach this whole thing. “So, you guys know all about winning, right?”

“Winning?” Palamedes clearly didn’t expect that question, and blinked owlishly behind his glasses.

“Yes.” Camilla was definitely answering Gideon, not him.

“What kind of ‘winning’?” Palamedes continued. “I mean, it depends on the context and the structure of the competition-”

“We know all about winning,” Cam cut him off. “Now what’s your question?”

“Okay, cool,” Gideon began, relieved that Cam was such a badass who knew everything. “So, Harrow and I have had this ongoing competition pretty much forever.”

“Um,” Pal began, but Cam gave him a look that Gideon didn’t quite catch and he just coughed. “Go on.”

“Well she usually won, when we were growing up,” Gideon admitted. “But sometimes I’d get a lick in.”

“Literally?” Cam asked in a just-checking-to-be-clear tone.

“No! I mean once, but - no! It’s an expression,” Gideon huffed. “ANY-way, since we came here, I’ve been winning more often. It’s totally because she’s cut off from her evil dreadlord parents, they’re like, the source of her power I’m pretty sure. But uh. Today, like just a bit ago, when I went into the apartment I overheard her talking to her parents and I, uh. I’m not sure anymore. About anything.” Gideon swallowed and had to clear her throat around the lump that threatened to form in it, but she had started this explanation and she really wanted Cam to help her out, so she continued honestly (no sense in lying anyway since apparently she sucked at it, right). “She was saying I was a big dumb idiot, basically, and that she was like. Spying. On me. For them.” Goddamn, it still hurt to say it. “I thought I had left them behind,” she muttered. “I thought… it was just us now. But she only cares about her stuff and not about me after all.”

“Are you sure this is about ‘winning’?” Palamedes asked after exchanging a long glance with Cam.

“Well, yeah!” Gideon brushed her messy bangs out of her face, and pushed up her shades to hold them back. “I can’t win if she doesn’t give a shit about anything I do. You know how hard it is to annoy someone who doesn’t care about you at all?”

“Difficult,” Cam agreed, looking thoughtful. 

“I’m really not sure that your relationship with Harrow is a competition,” Palamedes insisted.

Gideon huffed a sigh. Sexpal seriously did not get this at all.

“Well, now,” Camilla said, “let’s explore the metaphor a bit, before we discard it. There might be some use there. Gideon, when you say you lose to her, what do you mean? Like what’s an example? How do you feel?”

This was the kind of analytical stuff she expected from the Sixth. “It sucks. It’s the same as losing in the fight simulator. It’s like… pain in my ribs, up high, and my face is hot because I’m all embarrassed and I’m pissed and I feel like I fucked up. Like I lost. I hate it.”

Cam nodded slowly. “But winning is - what? When you make her feel bad instead?”

“Nooo,” Gideon hesitated, trying to put words to a complex dance that she had grown up with but never once thought to question. “Making Harrow feel bad is impossible, she has no soul. I mean like. When I piss her off, or annoy her, or get in her way and then she has to stop what she’s doing to deal with me. The best is when I totally surprise her, or like. Just, really throw her off.”

Palamedes muttered something about ‘needlessly obscure’ but Cam still had that patient listening-to-bullshit look so Gideon looked at her.

“What sorts of things have you done that have thrown her off?” Cam asked. “When have you gotten that feeling of winning lately?”

“Well.” Gideon rolled her shoulders, finding it warm in her jacket. “Like. When Ortus came by and I pulled her aside to talk, and then she screwed up and said I was perfect. That was hilarious. And then I was like ‘hell yeah I am’ and I kissed her hand and she was just. Like. So thrown, you know?” Gideon grinned, remembering Harrow’s huge, dark eyes looking up at her. 

Palamedes was rubbing his face, his long, slender fingers over his eyes under his glasses. “I’m not a cardiologist,” he complained.

“The lungs are close to the heart,” Cam told him without pity, and turned her gaze back to Gideon. “So you feel good when you’re getting Harrow’s attention or being nice to her?” 

“It’s more complicated than that,” Gideon protested.

“Nav,” Palamedes said, drawing his hands down off of his face and pressing them together as he leaned forward over them earnestly. “Just kiss her.”

“PAL! No!” Gideon facepalmed. “Way too far! There’s a huge difference between kissing her hand or pledging to be her sword and just straight up smooching someone! You can’t kiss someone you hate, that’s not cool. That’s like, unwanted sexual attention, man. It’s crossing a line. But good try,” she added, not wanting Palamedes to be offended. The guy really went for the kill, damn. What a crazy thought. Kissing Harrow. Like kissing-kissing her. Harrow.

On like, the  _ lips. _

Gideon dragged her brain away from that chaotic image and turned in supplication back to Cam, who was rubbing a hand over her mouth. She wasn’t trying not to smile, surely? “Cam,” she complained. “Come on.”

“Well, I think it’s perfectly clear what’s going on here,” Camilla said after clearing her throat. 

Palamedes sat back, looking relieved, presumably because Camilla was about to make a ton of sense. Gideon leaned forward.

“Your attacks have actually been successful,” Camilla continued, “and Nonagesiums was lying to her parents. So you should keep it up. In fact, do something she really doesn't expect. Invite her to the Spring Fling."

"The what?" Gideon stared blankly. 

"The Spring Fling," Palamedes explained. "It's a dance to celebrate the equinox; the Third hosts it. Excellent idea, Cam. That will certainly facilitate things in several regards."

"I told you," Camilla shrugged. "I know all about winning."

Gideon was already imagining it in her mind's eye. Her, holding a bouquet of black roses, offering them to Harrow with the most over the top dance invitation ever. Maybe she could recite a poem about it or something. Roses are black, honey's from bees, want to go to a dance with mees. Yeah, Harrow would lose it.

"I'll do it," she said abruptly, surging to her feet. "Cam, you're a genius. Hey, don't tell Harrow, okay guys? I want to surprise her."

"I wouldn't dream of it," Camilla said sincerely.

"I'm going to stay out of this," Palamedes promised, crossing his arms. 

"That's probably for the best, Doc," Gideon agreed. "I appreciate the advice but you really go for the throat."

"Don't wait too long to ask her," Camilla warned. "Or someone else will." 

Gideon frowned. "Like Ortus," she agreed. Palamedes choked, no doubt surprised that Gideon had picked up on that little situation. "I'll ask her soon, don't worry."

"Tonight," Cam pressed.

"Okay. Yeah! Tonight. Alright, I gotta go," Gideon said, heading for the door. "The market building closes soon. Thanks guys!"

"What do you need at the market?" Palamedes asked.

Gideon pulled her shades back on as she opened the door, and turned to give him a big grin. "Roses! Ayy!"

And with a double finger gun salute, she was off.


	14. Flowers of the Seventh House

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gideon quests for roses.

The campus market had many things - instant noodles, cookies, beer - but they did not have flowers. The closest they came was a few potted plants meant for students to bring to their dorms. Gideon’s hopes soared when she saw a sign for a “spider plant” but that turned out to just be some grass in a bucket. 

“Why would anyone pay for grass?” she asked the helpful clerk. It was the Seventh girl she had met at the party, the one with the hypnotic lips. “There’s grass all over the place around here. You could just go dig it up.”

“Well,” Nur said (her name tag said her name was Nur, anyway, Gideon couldn’t remember if she had even been introduced at the party), “for one thing, you’re not allowed to go around digging up campus plants. And for another, spider plants aren’t just grass. They can flower. And make babies!”

What the fuck? This was beyond Gideon. “I just want roses,” she sighed.

Nur glanced around and leaned in, looking up at Gideon earnestly. “There’s no roses here, but, you know, Dulcinea is on the Greenhouse roster this evening.”

Gideon tried to figure out how that was relevant. “They sell flowers there?”

Nur shook her head quickly. “We’re not allowed to accept any money for them. Or to give them away! But,” she lowered her voice again, making Gideon lean in even closer to those lips, “there’s a loophole. There’s no rule specifically against trading for them!”

Gideon brushed her bangs to one side, frowning down at the cute Seventh girl. “You’re telling me I gotta go to a greenhouse and trade something for roses? Cause that’s some fae shit right there.”

“It’s so romantic,” Nur sighed. “Bring peanut butter cookies. They’re Dulcie’s favourite.”

And so, a box of Dad’s Peanut Butter Bikkies under one arm, Gideon made her way to Seventh Heaven. It was getting dark now and the fairy lights strung through the trees gave the entire place a decidedly ethereal feel. The delicate boy with glasses answered the door when she knocked.

“Gideon?” he blinked owlishly at her as she came in. “Are you here to spar with Pro again?”

“Not tonight,” she answered, then lowered her voice and flashed the box of cookies at him. “But I brought a gift for the fairy in the greenhouse.”

He laughed. “She’ll be happy to see you, I bet. The greenhouse is on the roof - just follow the stairs all the way up, you can’t miss it.”

“Thanks. Hey - sorry, I forgot your name?”

“Oh,” he blushed a bit, fussing with the door as he locked it again behind her. “Um. It’s Allen.”

“Woah, really? Then I never got it, cause I would have remembered that! Hah, so I didn’t forget,” she said, pleased. He looked puzzled, so she added, “that was my dad’s name.”

“Oh,” Allen said. 

“Yeah, he came to this school too, did you know? He was a cav, back in the day! Passed away though. No, it’s ok, I don’t remember him, I was tiny. Don’t worry about it.”

“What, ah. What house was he in?” Allen asked politely.

“Uh.” Gideon stared at him. She had no idea. Why didn’t she know that?

“Oh,” Allen said quickly, “but they didn’t have Houses back then, right? I forgot they’re new.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, still wondering. Had he been in a frat? Which frat? Was there some house equivalent? Was there some kind of record of him here at the school? Maybe she could learn more about what kind of a man he had been if she could find it. Allen had said something, she realized, but it didn’t seem to require an answer so she gave him the ol’ finger guns and said “I gotta run, can’t keep the fairy waiting!” and fled up the stairs.

The dark stain on the wood stairs and bannister still screamed ‘rich people’ at her, but she was starting to get used to the idea that luxuries were not inherently evil. Also that wood wasn’t actually hard to come by. Trees just kinda grew all over the place around here. Like nice people. Mainland was crazy. 

Gideon passed by the art studios without stopping. She peeked into the gym and spotted Pro, but he was with an instructor or another cav or something so she just waved and continued up the stairs. Pro was pretty cool. So was Dulcie, actually. They were both just, really friendly and talented. And stealthy smart. Not the kind of smart that called you an idiot and pointed out how you were wrong, but Pro had a tactician’s mind, and she’d heard Dulcie and Palamedes debate about truth and beauty. Definitely cool siblings. Gideon wondered what their parents were like. What hers would have been like.

She hadn’t wondered that in a long time.

The staircase ended in a short, narrow hall with a heavy door labelled ROOF ACCESS. She pushed it open and warm, heavily-scented air washed over her. 

The Greenhouse was as beautiful as the rest of Seventh Heaven, but it had a familiar pragmatism to it that gave Gideon a weird sense of deja vu, and even her very first pang of what could only be homesickness. The greenhouse back at the antarctic lab didn’t use glass, of course, since half the year there was no sun to warm it anyway. But it was built in a similar layout, of aisles and rows of waist-high planters, and the bright sun-lamps above her warmed her face the same way. It was a good place to go when you wanted to pretend you were somewhere else. 

Well, she was somewhere else now, and it was awesome. Gideon adjusted her grip on the bikkie box and let the door shut behind her. “Helloooo?” she called, starting down the nearest aisle. The Greenhouse was long, probably covering a good chunk of the roof, and many of the rows of plants grew high enough to obscure her vision. “Is there a Greenhouse fairy here? I brought cookies!”

“Cookies?” The voice was light, and familiar, but it definitely wasn’t Dulciniea. Gideon’s brain changed gears so fast that her mouth stalled as Cytherea stepped out from behind a tall fern.

Cyth was wearing practical clothes for once, but they were the kind of “practical” clothes that people bought for several thousand dollars online, probably with tags that read _ authentique _ and _ bespoke. _ The important part was that the leggings were, well, leggings, and her green tunic was absurdly short. Her lips were painted fuschia tonight, and they parted as she smiled at Gideon. 

“Well this is a nice surprise,” Cytherea said, stopping just in front of Gideon, her hips canted to one side. “Is that for me?” 

“Uh,” Gideon’s mouth idled as her gaze followed Cytherea’s pointing finger to the box of cookies under her arm. “Oh! Uh. Yeah, sorry - I thought Dulcie was here tonight, and I heard she liked these. Do… you like this kind?” she offered her the box, feeling suddenly awkward.

“I’ll never say no to your cookies, Gideon.” Cytherea’s eyes were mischievous. “I’ll bring them to Dulcie though. It was her turn tonight but she’s having a bad day.” 

The way she said _ a bad day _ carried a weight to it that made Gideon frown, and pulled her gaze from Cyth’s lips to her eyes. “Is she ok?”

A shrug. “She’s had worse, but days like this are no fun. I told her to rest. If she’s smart she’ll go to sleep early. I don’t mind covering for her here, anyway. It’s the middle of the growing season so mostly I just have to monitor the humidity levels and things like that. Hey, come with me, I’ll show you something cool,” she said, and when Gideon hesitated, Cytherea caught her hand to pull her along. “You’ve got good timing! The lights are about to go out.”

“Why are they even on?” Gideon wondered. “You guys get sun here.”

“The spring days are too short, so we augment them. We don’t need them at all in the summer.” Cytherea dropped the box of cookies off on a stool where a gauzy jacket was draped and brought Gideon to the center of the greenhouse. There was a clear space there, about four meters square, probably set aside for lectures or something academic. Cytherea pulled her to the middle of it and took both of Gideon’s hands in hers. “Now we wait,” she said, grinning.

“Uh. Kay.” Gideon stood, gradually becoming aware that pinpricks of sweat were breaking out down her back and sides. “It’s hot in here.”

“That’s just you, darling,” Cytherea said with a teasing tone. “Or possibly your leather jacket. Why don’t you take it off?”

“Sure.” Gideon shrugged it off but as soon as she tossed it aside Cytherea caught her hands again. She looked down at their hands, bemused. “I’m not gonna run away.”

“Promise?” Cytherea said. 

And then the lights went out.

Gideon _ did _ startle, but not so much that she dislodged her fingers from the soft cool ones around them. The blazing sun lamps above them extinguished with an audible snap, leaving only a string of dim red lights on the floor to mark the aisles. As Gideon’s eyes adjusted, she looked up, and gaped at the night sky above them, visible through the glass roof. “Woah.”

“Beautiful,” Cytherea agreed, but when Gideon looked back down at her, she wasn’t looking at the stars. “I’m glad I could show off our greenhouse,” she said, and her voice was hushed now in the darkness. “I’m glad you came to visit. Even if I wasn’t the one you were hoping to see.”

“I’m happy to see you,” Gideon assured her. “If I had known it was you I still woulda come. I just would have brought you something you liked better. Than the um. Peanut butter cookies. What would you like instead?”

Cytherea canted her head to one side. “Why are you bringing random presents to the Greenhouse?”

“Oh!” Gideon blinked as visions of a scowling Harrow filled her mind. She laughed, a slightly strained sound, and pulled her hands away. “Oh yeah, sorry. I came here for a reason! I need some flowers, and this is the only place on campus that has them, I think. And the girl, Nur, she told me that you guys couldn’t sell ‘em or give them away but you were allowed to trade for them.”

“Ahhh,” Cytherea nodded her understanding. “So you brought her cookies. Smart. But you’ll have to trade me something else for flowers.”

“Sure,” Gideon agreed. “Name it.”

“Well now, it depends on what kind of flowers you want, and who they’re for.” Cytherea curled a lock of her hair around her finger as she looked up at Gideon. “I suppose they weren’t going to be for me.”

“Why would I get you flowers?” Gideon laughed. “You’re the flower fairy. You already have flowers.”

Cytherea sighed, her eyes flicking heavenward as if in exasperation, even though Gideon had totally just made a really good point. “A girl can never have too many flowers, Gideon. Are you getting them for Harrowhark, then?”

“How -” Gideon blurted out, and from Cytherea’s sudden smirk she knew it was already too late to deny it. “Maybe!”

Cytherea stepped even closer, teasing again as she whispered, “did you want _ roses _ for her, Nav?”

“Maybe,” Gideon admitted, feeling cornered. She wouldn’t step back, though. Her hands hung at her sides and she was abruptly hyper aware of them, and how she couldn’t put them around Cytherea’s waist. “Maybe some roses.”

“Red roses?” Cytherea leaned closer. Her chest brushed Gideon’s and the brief contact sent a fresh spike of adrenaline through Gideon’s veins. 

“Black,” Gideon managed, her voice barely above a whisper now. “If you got ‘em.”

“How very Ninth of you.” Cytherea frowned, though, and raised her hands to slide them up Gideon’s sides, resting at the bottom of her ribs. 

The gesture somehow freed Gideon’s arms from their self-imposed paralysis but now they were acting on their own, having given on up ever getting useful instructions from Gideon’s brain, and she settled her hands at the small of Cytherea’s back, feeling the gentle curve of it against her palms. She had no idea what was going to happen but there was no way in hell she was going to stop it from happening. 

Cytherea’s frown disappeared and she smiled up at Gideon. “Well then. I’ll trade you some fine gothic roses. But it will cost you one kiss.”

She was probably supposed to say something witty or cool but Gideon's ability to banter was offline. All she could manage was a quiet "Okay." And she kissed Cytherea. 

It was a hesitant kiss, soft and sweet. Her hands slid up Cytherea's back, pulling her closer, and the warmth of her body as it pressed against Gideon's was just as heady as the taste of her lips. 

The kiss broke, and Gideon opened her eyes. She had no idea what her own expression was, but in Cytherea's bright blue eyes there was a look of _ victory. _ It was actually pretty hot. 

Gideon's arms tightened around her instead of letting go. "So," she managed, barely above a whisper. "That's one flower, right?"

"Better make it a dozen," Cytherea said firmly, and wound her arms around Gideon's neck, going up on tiptoe to kiss her again. 

This time it was definitely Cytherea who was doing the kissing. She was confident and demanding, and Gideon yielded to her blissfully. She marvelled at how soft and delicate Cyth felt in her arms - and that was hot too, like she could have picked her up or carried her off without effort - and she tried her best to match what Cytherea was doing. It felt natural and exciting, the mingling of their breath, her tongue tracing Cytherea's lower lip, Cytherea sucking on hers. Gideon moaned, the muffled sound surprising her, and slid a hand up Cytherea's back to tangle her fist in her long brown hair. She got a firm grip and Cytherea made a quiet little sound of need against her, which was without question the hottest thing Gideon had ever heard in her entire life. 

It was Cytherea who eventually pulled back, her face flushed as she caught her breath, a silly grin on her face. Gideon could have stood there kissing her all night, she was sure, but she eased her hold when Cyth pulled away, letting her hands merely steady the slender girl at her waist. 

Cytherea looked like she might say something, but then her smile grew wistful and she gave a little sigh, raising her hand to trace her fingers along Gideon’s jaw before she stepped away. “Alright,” she said. “That’s enough. Let’s go find you some flowers.”

“Oh! Yeah,” Gideon blinked, abruptly remembering what she was doing here. “Yeah, I need some so I can ask Harrow to the dance.”

“Oh my, is that what this is about?” Cytherea beckoned Gideon deeper into the Greenhouse aisles but didn’t take her hand this time. “You’re doing it properly. A dozen roses is a great way to ask a lady out.”

“Um.” Gideon hesitated, not really sure how to explain all this. But she couldn’t just let that lie. Not after kissing Cytherea like that. “I’m not asking her out, for the record.”

That got her a skeptical over-the-shoulder glance. “You’re giving her a dozen roses and asking her to a dance. That sounds like you’re asking her out to me.”

“That’s the point! It’s the last thing she’ll expect.”

“Harrow doesn’t know you like her?” Cytherea turned off the central aisle and slowed down, moving carefully between lush rose bushes on either side. Mostly yellow on the left and pink on the right. “I think she’ll figure it out after this.”

“I don’t like her!” Gideon protested. But it felt wrong to say, like she was betraying Harrow somehow. She felt a worm of guilt in her gut and didn’t even know why. “She hates me,” she began, but had to catch herself. “Okay actually, she doesn’t hate me. She never hated me.”

Cytherea stopped where the roses bloomed red. She turned and faced Gideon. “Are you sure some of these wouldn’t be better?”

Gideon just shook her head, but grinned. Cyth had a great way of teasing her. She liked it. “These are the kind I’d give you,” she said with a wink. “But Harrow’s heart is shrivelled and black and I need some evil lookin’ flowers for the Dark Lady of the Ice and Snow.”

Cytherea seemed pleased at the banter. “Ice and snow? I’ll show you what would match that. But if she doesn’t like them, Gideon, come back and get a red rose for me. I’ll take you to the dance instead, and we’ll make everyone on campus wild with jealousy.”

“Right?” Gideon grinned, feeling a bit better for some reason. “Girls want me, boys wanna be me. Oh, woah.” She stopped as she saw which roses Cytherea had led her to. They were smaller than the others, and the blossoms were narrower, some just budding, but the petals were pure white except for the tips, which looked black in the darkness. “Oh man, that’s perfect.”

“These are very rare,” Cytherea said, tracing a delicate finger around the edge of a blossom. “But that was a very good kiss. So you may have some.”

“Thanks, Cytherea. You’re the best.” Because they were so close, and Cyth was so amazing, she leaned in and gave her a kiss on the cheek. Cytherea must have been blushing because her cheek felt warm under Gideon’s lips. “I’ll tell Harrow they’re from you.”

“Oh god, don’t do that,” Cytherea said with feeling.

She showed Gideon how to clip the stems without cutting herself on thorns, and how to put little water reservoirs at the tip of each stem so the roses didn’t spoil. They wrapped them in a large sheet of waxed paper, all fancy like in the movies, and the whole time Cytherea kept talking about Gideon’s ‘hot date’ and ‘lady love’ as Gideon tried to protest that it wasn’t like that. 

Back in the central area where the stars had first appeared, Gideon stopped to put on her jacket again. It was still cool outside at night, even if the Greenhouse was hot. “When’s your shift up?" she asked casually, wondering if she might walk Cytherea home.

“I still have some work to do,” Cytherea said, but she spoke slowly, like she was distracted, and rubbed her face. “So, I’ll come home later, I think. Maybe I’ll ask Pro to walk me home. I feel a bit lightheaded.”

“Too much kissing,” Gideon said, meaning it as a joke, but Cytherea didn’t look so hot, now that she peered at her closer. “Hey, are you feeling alright?”

“Just - a bit dizzy,” Cytherea said. “And tired all of a sudden. Maybe I’ll go home early. I don’t … feel well.”

“Woah, careful!” Gideon caught Cytherea’s arm as she swayed on her feet. “You should sit down,” she said firmly, guiding Cyth to a seat on a crate. Her bare arms felt hot under Gideon’s hands. “Are you sick?”

“I don’t know. I don’t feel good.” Cytherea leaned forward, her head in her hands, her elbows on her knees. “Can you get Protesilaus?”

“Yeah, he’s downstairs,” Gideon said, but she hesitated, not wanting to leave Cytherea like this. “Do you want me to take you down to him?”

“I want Pro,” was all Cyth said, and the edge of fear in her voice snaked around Gideon’s heart and constricted.

“I’ll get him!” Gideon promised, and sprinted for the door.


	15. Proposal in the Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A proposal happens in the darkness of Canaan's grounds.

“But she’s sweating, right? That’s good, isn’t it?” Gideon had to half-jog to keep up with Pro’s massive strides as he carried Cytherea across the moonlit campus towards the Sixth House clinic. “I thought that meant the fever was breaking.”

Protesilaus was frowning, and he didn’t turn his head when he answered; his gaze stayed fixed on the lit windows at the far end of the field. “If she just got the fever it shouldn’t be this bad and it shouldn’t be breaking already. I’ve only seen this once before, but it was when she got her nanites cleansed.”

“What?” Gideon’s foot hit a divot in the grass, invisible in the dark, and she had to catch herself before she fell. Her arms were full too, but not of a beautiful sick girl. She had taken Cyth’s things - her jacket, her cookies - and, at Cytherea’s half-coherent insistence, the slender bouquet of roses. “What do you mean, cleansed?”

“Ask Palamedes,” Pro said shortly. “He knows more about it.”

Gideon fell into silence, concentrating on keeping up. Why did Pro need to have such long damn legs?

Cytherea cried out suddenly, a wordless, incoherent sound of pain, and one of her legs jerked.

Gideon and Pro broke into a jog in the same stride. 

The clinic was impossibly far away. Miles, surely. At least a hundred feet, anyway. She had no head for distances but ten feet would have been too far, with Cytherea making sounds like that. Gideon wanted to be the one carrying her. Gideon was glad Pro was carrying her. She wanted to go inside with them, to hold Cyth’s hand and say ‘excuse me, nurse, but I just kissed this woman,’ as if that mattered, as if the kiss itself had mattered. Had it mattered?

Maybe not to Cytherea.

“Get the door,” Pro grunted.

“Right.” Gideon sprinted ahead and hauled the glass door open. A bright orange EMERGENCY sign was glowing above it and inside were clean white walls and a grey tiled floor with different coloured lines tracing paths along it. She held the door and Pro passed her, Cytherea clutched tightly to his chest.

“Take her stuff back, let Dulcie know what’s up,” he said, barely slowing to do it and speeding away again without waiting for an answer.

“Okay,” Gideon said to his back, hesitating in the hall. But there were other people around, coming and going, some in scrubs and some in need of assistance. Standing with an armful of junk in the middle of the clinic’s emergency entrance wasn’t a long term solution, here. 

Gideon turned and pushed the door back open with her shoulder, heading vaguely back towards her residence. She wasn’t quite sure which way it was from here, but if Seventh Heaven was off to the right and they had left by the back door then the front path that led to her res should be…. left? Leftish? 

Gideon went leftish. 

Between her abysmal sense of direction and the fact that her visual cortex was vividly replaying an alternating mashup up Gideon’s First Kiss and Cytherea Moaning On The Floor In Pain, it didn’t surprise her that she ended up lost. 

On her left was a tall brown brick of a building that looked closed and locked, and on her right was some kind of community garden that she had almost certainly never seen before. Mercifully, there was at least one thing she recognized. The sound of teen voices, raised in angst. 

_“It’s a good mark! Come on.”_

_“Minus, JM, A minus. Not A, not A plus. Minus.”_

_“But still an A!”_

_“The kind of A losers get.”_

_“Well then it fits, doesn’t it? Ow! Hey, quit it - is that Gideon?”_

“JM? Isaac? Hey.” Gideon waved an awkward half-wave with her broken arm, trying not to drop anything as the punklets did an award-winning impression of ‘how to walk when you’re simultaneously surprised, puzzled, crippled with shyness, and also eager to see a super cool person again.’

“Um. Hey, Nav,” Jeannemary answered first. Isaac was the one blushing this time, possibly because Gideon knew his secret shame of getting a really good mark instead of a perfect mark on some kind of nerd assessment that literally no one would care about ever again. “What’s up?”

“Well….” Gideon hesitated, trying to gather her thoughts and failing. “Uh. So. Cyth is sick?”

“What?” JM gasped, looking suitably worried. Isaac also frowned in concern, distracted from the ignominy of an A-minus. “Does she have what Dulcie has?”

“Dulcinea has COPD,” Isaac reminded JM, but in a kind of snippy way. “Cytherea’s lungs function fine. I think. Do they?” he turned his nerdy little face to Gideon.

“She’s got a fever. Uh. Are you guys heading back to res?” Gideon glanced behind her. 

Oh. Yes. There was the residence building - directly behind her. She had passed it on the side with no windows.

“Yeah,” JM was saying. “Isaac just finished an organic chem lab. Where are you going?”

“Just, walking,” Gideon hedged. “Listen, this is Cyth’s jacket. If you’re heading back up, can you drop it off at 3B and let Dulcie know that Pro carried Cyth to the clinic? Tell her Cyth has a fever.”

“He _carried _her?” JM’s voice went up an octave.

“It’s a bad fever,” Gideon muttered, handing off Cytherea’s jacket to Isaac, whose eyes were wide. “I’ll be back in a bit. Or something.”

“Okay,” JM said, drawing closer to Isaac on the path.

“We’ll tell her,” Isaac promised.

“Cool, cool.” Gideon glanced between them. They glanced at each other. “Uh, later,” she said, and strode off down the path as if she had totally intended to go this way from the start. 

She didn’t go far. She didn’t want to get lost again, for one thing, and she had nowhere in particular she wanted to go, for another. There were a few other students here and there on the path so Gideon cut through a little garden thing to get to a copse of trees. They were pruned, and sparse, but the shadows were deeper among them and she found a low wood bench tucked against the naked trunk of a big leafy kind of tree. She sank down onto the bench and leaned back against the tree, staring off into space.

After a while, she opened the box of cookies and ate five, mentally swearing to buy Dulcie another box tomorrow. Above her in the trees, a squirrel chattered. It sounded pissed, so she crushed up another cookie in her hand and dropped the chunks behind the bench. “There you go, buddy,” she muttered.

What a fuckin’ day. 

It was, if Gideon was being honest with herself (and she may as well since she sucked at lying, right), too much bullshit for her to think about. She had met Ortus and hated him already, Harrow was buddies with him and plotting with the Sixth kids - about her! - Aggy was the coolest person ever constructed by man and science, and Cytherea…

Cytherea had kissed her. Like really, really well. It had been instructional. It had been hot as hell. Gideon’s hands remembered the feel of her slender waist, her smooth back, how she could just feel the delicate ribs beneath her hand. The tangle of hair in her fist. Cyth’s lips on hers, their tongues brushing against each other.

Cytherea’s hot skin when Gideon kissed her cheek, after. 

Cytherea fainting.

Cytherea in the clinic now, without Gideon, while Gideon sat here with a half empty box of cookies and the roses that Cytherea had traded her for her heart. 

“Griddle?”

“Gah!” Gideon jerked upright, knocking the box of cookies off the bench. Had she just dozed off? But no, there ahead of her was the Shadow of Shadows, the gliding, elegantly appointed form of the Dread Queen of Darkness. “Goddamn, Harrow, you scared the bananas out of me,” Gideon complained, definitely not whining at all. It figured that Harrow would find her sulking in the darkness. She was naturally attracted to mystery and misery. Actually, maybe she skulked here too sometimes. “Am I in your spot?” Gideon asked as Harrow picked her way carefully through the garden towards her. She sounded tired, even to her own ears.

Harrow stopped at the edge of the canopy, half a dozen feet from where Gideon lounged against the tree. “No,” she said, speaking carefully, as if Gideon were somehow an easily frightened rabbit. “Camilla said something happened and I ought to check on you, so I obliged her. Are you… did you want to be alone?” Harrow shifted her weight, frowning at Gideon, but kept speaking before Gideon could answer her. “I’m… I remember that privacy was nearly impossible, before, and now you have your room, but it's not exactly private, or quiet, and if you are just looking for quiet, and Hect is being overbearing by proxy… I can leave,” she finally blurted out.

It was weird to see Harrow thrown off of her stride. She really sucked at talking about feelings. Then again, she had been raised by techno lich demons in the frozen waste where emotion was weakness so what could you expect, really. “You know when you play that video game, Radiation,” Gideon began, slowly sitting up and stretching her back and shoulders, “and you’re exploring the world and making your base in the first zone, and there's one kind of enemy that just, is the bane of your existence? For me it was the zombies. Like I could handle the rest of the mobs but that one fucker kept killing me, and I hated them. And then you finally go to the next zone and suddenly all the monsters are different, they’re like dinosaurs now, and they have new powers and they just sneeze and you die, and it’s cool but also terrifying, right? And then one day you’re out like, gathering flowers. Or whatever. And you see one of the old zombies that used to haunt your existence and it’s like, so familiar, a relic of a simpler time, and you’re actually happy to see the zombie? You’re like oh, hey buddy, what’s up? You haven't killed me in a while! Did you miss me?”

Harrow's face was devoid of expression and she slowly canted her head to one side. “Am I to gather from your barely coherent rambling that I am not unwelcome?”

“Come have a seat.” Gideon bent down to retrieve the cookie box. “Want a bikkie?”

“I’m not here for your cookies,” Harrow said loftily, gathering her full skirts as she gracefully sat beside Gideon on the bench. 

“You don’t like anyone’s cookies,” Gideon said without heat. “More for me.” She crammed one into her mouth.

“Remember to chew,” Harrow said with a hauteur that suited her better than any amount of hesitation. “Now. Do you want to tell me what happened?”

“Nnn.” Gideon hedged. She looked at the box rather than at Harrow, whose skirts were brushing Gideon’s legs again. “I mean. Yes. But also no.”

“It’s not like you to be conflicted, Griddle.”

Gideon absently started ripping little tears into the edge of the box flap. “Well, I kinda want to, like. Talk about it. I mean you'll hear most of it anyway. But there's some stuff that I don't want your parents to hear.”

Harrow went rigid beside her. “My parents?”

Gideon tore a flap off and started ripping it into orange confetti. “I managed to lie to you today, you know.”

“What?”

“When Cam left this afternoon, I was just coming in.” Gideon glanced at Harrow as Harrow abruptly surged to her feet. “I stood in the hall,” she pressed on, “and I overheard your whole conversation with your parents. Then I opened and closed the door and pretended to come in.” 

Gideon watched as Harrow’s narrow little face went pale as a corpse’s. Her lips pressed together and she slowly closed her eyes, raising her hands to press her fingertips to her temples. She was probably cursing herself for being careless, for getting caught. She probably thought Gideon hated her. Gideon found the silence too painful, so she blurted, “I told Cam and Pal about it.” 

She expected Harrow to explode at her for that but instead Harrow actually looked relieved. Her cheeks flushed red again and she looked at Gideon, though her hands were were still up like she was trying to light Gideon on fire with her mind. She probably was.

“Camilla and Palamedes are vaguely aware of the truth of my relationship with my parents. What did they say?”

“Uh. That you were lying to them, probably. “

“And did you believe that?”

“It made sense,” Gideon shrugged reluctantly. “I’d feel better if I heard you say it, though.”

“But why would you believe me?” Harrow’s voice was quiet, a hopeless note behind it. “If I tell you that I’m lying to everyone else, but not to you, then how is that believable? You can’t trust a liar.”

“Harrow,” Gideon said, holding her gaze now. “Are you spying on me for your parents?”

“No! Well -” Harrow’s fingers twisted in knots in front of her stomach. “It’s complicated.”

“Dude,” Gideon protested.

“I’m not! But they think I am.” It all came out in a rush, with Harrow swaying from side to side in lieu of pacing, like Gideon’s attention was pinning her to the ground. “They asked me to, and they still control my finances so I can’t afford to cut ties with them yet. So I tell them only things that they could hear through other means, or things that don’t matter, and I try to appear to be an obedient spy without actually being one.”

“And do you really think I’m an idiot?” 

“Oh, Griddle,” Harrow said gently. “I think everyone’s an idiot.”

That broke the tension between them, and Gideon laughed, relieved for some reason. “Right.”

“But I will say,” Harrow continued with the same absolute sincerity, “that while I am significantly more intelligent than you, you are without question a better person than I am in every other way.”

A pleasant heat suffused Gideon’s chest and cheeks, melting the little ice shards that Harrow’s words to her parents had left embedded in her ribs. “I dunno about every way,” she said, thinking that while she was definitely hella awesome, she probably wouldn’t rock a frock like Harrow could. “Hey,” she said on impulse. “Cam also said that I should ask you to the spring fling dance.”

“Oh. Of course she did,” Harrow sighed.

“You were supposed to be surprised,” Gideon complained. 

Harrow shook her head, smoothing her hands down on her skirt now. “I probably would have been, if I thought you had asked me on your own. But I’m not surprised that she suggested it. She told me to ask you, too. It would be convenient if we went together because of Ninth Business, as you like to call it.”

“More robot fights?” Gideon sat up eagerly, tossing the cardboard aside. 

“I certainly hope not,” Harrow scowled at her. “But first tell me what else happened tonight.”

“Oh, just stuff. I went to the greenhouse to get flowers so I could ask you to the dance properly.” 

They both glanced at the bouquet, still wrapped in wax paper. 

“You got me flowers?” Harrow stared. “After overhearing… all that?”

“It's a question of style, Nonageezy.”

“Flowers?” Harrow still looked like a cog had slipped loose in her main processor. “Really? …are they all poisonous?”

Gideon laughed. “Oh, shit, that would have been even better! No, I asked for black roses, but they didn’t have any in the Greenhouse, so I got something even better.”

“You can't buy Greenhouse flowers, Griddle. How did you get those?”

“Well I’m getting to it! The Seventh kids can’t sell them but they can take trades. So I traded Cyth a kiss for them, but then she got a crazy fever and fainted. Pro said it was like a nanite purge, or something, and he carried her to the clinic.”

“A nanite _purge?”_ Harrow frowned. “She already had her nanites purged. She’s not supposed to have any left.”

Gideon watched Harrow as she paced a small oval in the shadows of the tree. She wasn’t sure what to say to that. “Is it safe to talk about this stuff here?” she asked instead.

“As safe as it can be,” Harrow answered, still frowning into the middle distance. “I’ve got an ultrasonic mic jammer in my purse and it’s too dark to read lips.”

“Goddamn,” Gideon said with feeling. Her heart beat a little faster as she watched Harrow. The scowling techno wizard paced like she could stay a step ahead of her enemies if she just kept walking. “Well, that’s all I got. Command me, Glorious and Dreadful One.”

Harrow glided to a stop before her, her expression intent now. “Command you to do what?”

“Anything,” Gideon grinned, feeling warm and reckless again. “You know what’s going on, not me. Tell me how to help. Or spill some of those secrets you owe me.”

That last bit made Harrow drop her eyes and she seemed to shrink back slightly. “I do owe you secrets,” she admitted. “But there are so many, and I don’t know which are safe to share yet, and which you’d most like to know, and… “ She looked up with a wan little smile, a crooked and slightly self-mocking smile that Gideon had never seen on her face before. “I am not good at sharing secrets.”

“Yeah, well. I suck at lying but I still managed it,” Gideon said. “Come here.”

Harrow crossed the three feet of space between them cautiously, like Gideon would sprout fangs or a scorpion tail. 

Gideon reached up and carefully took Harrow’s hands in hers, letting her cool and slender fingers sit against her upturned palms. She pulled Harrow the last step forward, so her knees were between Gideon’s. The space between them was filled with the bunched up fabric of Harrow’s skirt. The fabric had dancing skeletons and little hearts on it, and the crinolines beneath it crackled like electricity. 

“I have an idea ,” Gideon said solemnly.

“It’s a bad one,” Harrow responded automatically. “It’s poorly thought out and will bring us both ruin.”

“I haven’t even told you - nevermind. Listen.” She slipped Harrow’s right hand onto her left, easily holding the two docile little hands pinned in one of her own so she could reach over and pick up the bouquet. 

“Griddle.”

“Nonagesimus.” Gideon looked up at Harrow’s heart-shaped face and raised the bouquet between them. “Would you do me the singular honour of being my friend?”

“Griddle.” Harrow’s stern expression was totally betrayed by the way her hands were clinging to Gideon’s hand now. “You can’t just, you don’t _ask_ people to be your friend.”

“You totally do,” Gideon insisted, and tucked the bouquet between Harrow’s arms, grinning. “There, you accepted.”

“Nav!” Now she let go of Gideon’s hand, fumbling for the bouquet before it fell. “I’m just… you goof. Why are you asking me something like this?”

“Well, y’know, all the reasons.” Gideon shrugged, then just named reasons as they came to her. “It might make it easier to tell me secrets. And out of all the assholes on this campus, I’m the only asshole who knows where we both came from. Really knows, I mean. We know more about each other than anyone else does. And! Although it is possible that, at times, I may or may not have fantasized about firing you into the sun, I think we’ve come a long way since then. You’re not entirely shitty, you’re not completely evil, and you’re not even a tiny bit boring. And we could both use a friend.”

“I can see you’ve given it some thought,” Harrow said dryly. “Though I must say it’s highly irregular to propose a friendship with flowers that you kissed another girl for.”

“Yeah, that was pretty weird,” Gideon agreed. The Seventh had some funny ways about them, for sure. “But I had to trade something and that was what she wanted.”

“I bet it was,” Harrow muttered, opening the top of the paper wrapping to peer inside. “Oh,” was all she said, with a little catch in her voice. She stared for a moment, then gently closed the paper again. “Very well. I accept. We are officially friends.”

“Sweet,” Gideon said, patting the bench beside her.

“I feel you should know,” Harrow began, though she did take a seat again.

“Yeah yeah, you’ll be a shitty friend. It’s cool. The bar’s real low, 'cause I don’t have any others.”

Harrow raised an eyebrow at her. “There are at least six people I can think of offhand who would consider you a friend.”

“Yeah? And how many of them broke into school property with me to steal high tech secrets?” Gideon grinned.

Harrow snorted quietly. “If that is your criteria for friendship, then I have good news for you. By the time the last dance of the spring fling is over, you’ll have two more.”


	16. Rules of Engagement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gals being pals.

The final class period must have let out, because the paths beyond the trees were suddenly full of irksome students, chatting loudly and ruining the sense of privacy and isolation Harrowhark had been savouring. “I need to put these in water,” she told Gideon. It was partially true, but mostly she wanted to flee back to their apartment, where she felt more in control and balanced.

“Yeah, of course,” Gideon agreed, all smiles now as she smoothly rose to her feet. “I was heading home anyway. I’ll hop through the shower while you do the roses, and then we can hang out.”

Harrow barely heard the second half of what Gideon said because her brain smacked into the visual of Gideon in the shower the way a bird smacks into a window, effectively stunning her. She realized that she was smiling like a besotted buffoon and quickly pulled a scowl back on, forcing herself to think of nasty things instead. Like wretched Cytherea putting her painted lips all over Harrow’s Cavalier. A fever was too good for her. 

“Sorry I dragged you out here.” Gideon’s voice was warm, and she sounded pleased rather than repentant. “I’m sure you were doing important stuff.”

“It’s no trouble,” Harrow managed, not used to Gideon (or anyone) apologizing to her. How were you supposed to answer such a statement? Should she have said that Gideon was worth the trouble instead? No. Too amorous. “Idiot,” she muttered, including herself in the imprecation.

“Now, Harrow,” Gideon said in a tone that damnable Magnus would have used, and then _threw an arm around Harrow’s shoulders._ “I may not have many friends, but I have seen lots of shows with friends in them! And there’s only one kind of show that has friends call each other idiots.”

“You are touching me,” Harrow hissed, feeling her face flush flaming red. 

“Can you guess which kind of show it is?” Gideon continued blithely. “I will tell you. It's the old anime classics.”

“Do not.”

“If you call me an idiot after saying you’re my friend, that makes you a Tsundere.”

“Idiot!”

“Sure, Harrow-chan.”

Harrow’s indignant screech was only slightly hampered by her clenched teeth. She still didn’t pull away, though, and she couldn’t smack Gideon’s arm because she was carefully cradling the roses.

“It’s ok, Harrow,” Gideon reassured her in the most irritating way possible. Mercifully, she took her arm back so she could use it to open the residence door. “I will teach you how to friend. I can make you a pamphlet or something.”

“That is completely inane,” Harrow said, following Gideon into the elevator, “but it might be helpful. At least it would give me an idea of what _you_ expect from a friendship.”

“Step one, no name calling,” Gideon said, and Harrow was fairly sure that she had just made that rule up herself.

Harrow looked up at her. Gideon’s freckles, which had grown more obvious as her skin had tanned in the past few days, were highlighted by a flush on her face. “No names at all?”

“Don’t worry, Raven Lady of the Frozen Wastes,” Gideon winked. “Titles are okay.”

Harrow barely bit back another ‘idiot’. “Then I’ll have to come up with a suitable title for you.”

“Pff, that’s easy. I’m your Cavalier.”

“A Cavalier of the Ninth house,” Harrow agreed, keying open the door to their apartment and letting Gideon push it open.

“To be honest,” Gideon said quietly, “I only joined the Ninth to get in on your thing. It didn’t matter which House it was. So, really, I’m just your Cavalier.”

Harrow froze in the entryway, afflicted by tachycardia and besieged by a vivid memory of Gideon kissing her hand, of swearing to be her sword. “I have to put these in water,” she managed, her mouth dry. It was a blessing that the apartment was empty of roommates because she would have imploded if Hect or Sextus had witnessed such an exchange. Although, she realized with growing horror, it was entirely possible that Gideon would continue to say such things now that they were Friends.

“Yeah, I’ll meet you in your room,” Gideon agreed, heading for the bathroom with the shower. “I’ll be quick!”

“No rush,” Harrow managed. “I’m not going anywhere tonight.”

She stayed frozen in place, watching Gideon disappear into the far room. Only when the door closed and locked with a click did Harrow give herself a shake, then scurried to her own room so she could search for a suitable vase. 

Her belongings grounded her, like she had hoped they would. She leaned her back against her door and looked around herself, trying to gather her thoughts. 

“Friends.” Her whisper was swallowed in the room. She caught a glimpse of her face, reflected in the mirrored closet door across from where she stood. She had covered most of it because she hated looking at herself, hated seeing her own face, but she put aside the roses and walked over to the bare patch now, intent on speaking to the devil behind the glass. 

The girl behind the glass glared at her defiantly, and Harrow scowled as if she could cow her own reflection. “You will not fuck this up.” She held the edge of the mirrored door with one hand and pointed a threatening finger at the doppelganger before her. “It’s more than you ever hoped she’d give you. Remember that. It’s more than you deserve.” Harrow’s face carefully smoothed over, not betraying the hammering of her heart or racing of her mind. “When you get jealous,” she whispered, “remember how you felt when she ran away from you the first day. Remember how you hoped that one day you could meet her again and start over, and that you didn’t deserve that, either. You will not fuck this up. You will be her friend. Her best friend. This is…” she faltered, and shook her head, looking away. It was not a chance at redemption. “This is your one chance to do right by her. You will not fuck it up.”

Pain in her palms distracted her and she tsked, glancing at the angry red crescents her nails had left in her own skin. “Idiot,” she muttered.

By the time Gideon knocked on her door again, Harrow had composed herself. She would be rational and careful, and savour Gideon’s friendship without letting her own selfishness spoil it. She had excellent willpower, after all, and was a logical creature. She would be fine. She would not become a hopeless addict and let her own completely understandable infatuation ruin her plans. 

She could handle this.

She opened the door to find Gideon, damp hair tossed to one side, wearing…

“Pyjamas?” 

“Well, yeah,” Gideon said with a smirk. “It’s past ten.”

“Since when do you even own pyjamas?” Harrow managed, watching as Gideon passed her, a small bag in her good hand. Her top was a sleeveless black Tshirt that said ‘LAZY BONES” in a font made of, amusingly, humerus bones, and shorts that barely qualified as such. White with little black skulls on them. Harrow’s gaze was fixed on those shorts and the absolutely incredible ass they concealed until Gideon broke her spontaneous hypnosis by flopping down hard on Harrow’s bed. 

“I ordered ‘em online.” Gideon shook the handbag out to spill crayons and a notepad onto the bed. “You can get anything online. I’m telling you, it’s amazing.”

“Yes, shipping to Oceania is significantly easier than shipping to Antarctica,” Harrow said dryly, “in that the shipping lanes actually exist here. What are you doing?”

“Makin’ a pamphlet,” Gideon answered , flipping open the notepad and beginning to write in sky blue text.

Harrow approached cautiously, peering at the paper. 

1\. NO INSULTS. (Titles are okay. )

“Crayons, Griddle?” 

“Crux gave them to me, the old sack of shit,” Gideon said without heat. “To ‘take notes in class with’. Joke’s on him, I’m using them. Ha ha! And to make friends with you, too! He’s probably rolling over in his grave.”

“He’s not dead, Griddle,” Harrow said sternly. Crux had always been nasty to Gideon, it was true, but only because he took his lead from Harrow’s parents. He had always been kind enough to Harrow, and she had a bit of a soft spot for the reclusive old caretaker. 

“He probably has one ready, anyway, just for spinning in. Let’s see, what’s rule number two? Oh! Hey, the roses look nice there!”

Harrow followed Gideon’s gaze to where the pure white roses with the deep purple tips were lovingly secured in a glass jar. She had planned on turning the jar into a miniature terrarium, initially. Maybe something with a bit of moss and a rodent skull. But that could wait. “They’re beautiful,” she said. She did not say that she had kissed each one. That she had already read up on the symbolism of them (and nearly swooned when she saw that white and purple was perfect for pure, new beginnings coupled with royalty and nobility, as for a knight swearing fealty to a liege, but the fact that the thorns were still on the stems indicated he possibility of impure thoughts mingled with the devotion and she was going to dry the roses when they opened fully and preserve them forever). Harrow looked back to Gideon and permitted herself a small smile. “Thank you.”

Gideon stared at her for a moment before an answering, even broader smile broke out on her face. “No sweat. They suit you. Oh, that can be rule two and three.”

Harrow glanced at the page as Gideon added 2. PRESENTS ARE COOL (in red) and 3. SAY PLEASE AND THANK YOU! (in green) beneath.

“Is this really necessary?” Harrow asked, frowning as she quickly memorized the first three rules. 

“I think they usually cover this stuff in preschool, so we can consider it a bit of catch-up.” Gideon tapped a crayon against her bottom lip. “Can you think of any rules you want on here?”

Harrow blinked, caught off guard. “No. Whatever you want, this was your idea.” She crossed her arms tightly in front of her, a defensive reflex.

Fortunately Gideon didn’t mock her inability to think up a simple rule. “I know, but I’m kinda making this up as I go along. Plus I did a quick search on my tablet for how to be a friend, but I think most of that stuff doesn’t apply to us.”

Harrow mentally cursed herself for not doing the same search before Gideon arrived, and made a note to do exactly that once she left. “I think many rules won’t apply to us.”

“Yeah, but I want to be able to pull this thing out and wave it at you if you’re being a dick,” Gideon said. “Is there anything you want on here at all? Like, me not annoying you or something?”

“That’s impossible. You’re naturally annoying.” Harrow moved carefully to take a seat at the very foot of the bed, as far from Gideon as possible while still feeling the illicit thrill of sitting on the same piece of furniture as her. “All I would ask of you is to tell me if I am being a bad friend in some way, because the entire concept is alien to me and I expect that it will not come naturally.” 

Gideon snorted in amusement, bending her head to add to the list. “Yeah, fair enough. Okay, I wont be afraid to call you out if you’re being a jackass.” 4. NO FEAR, CAVALIER, in purple. “I’m just gonna add one more,” she said, reaching for the black crayon.

“Fine,” Harrow muttered, already anxious about what it would be. The rules felt like criticisms, though she was perfectly aware that was not how Gideon meant them. No insults, be polite… giving gifts. Had she ever given Gideon a gift? Even once?

“No lying,” Gideon said, happily writing the words in crayon as if that made them immutable law. 

As far as Harrow was concerned, it did, and it was inconvenient. “Unacceptable. I can’t always tell you everything.”

“Then just say nothing,” Gideon said. She tossed the list between them, like a gauntlet thrown, and Harrow looked up from it to find her gaze captured neatly by the golden eyes before her. “You gotta promise, Harrow. Don’t lie to me.”

The words escaped on their own, and Harrow was helpless to stop them: “I won’t.” She knew she would curse herself later for agreeing to such an absurd thing as complete honesty, but she didn’t regret it. Something inside her released, like a cramped fist finally unclenching from a weapon’s hilt. She drew a shuddering breath. “I promise. If that is what you require.”

“Hell yeah, I require it.” Gideon lay back, satisfied, and rested against the pile of ornate pillows at the head of the bed. From how her cotton shirt draped over her chest it was abundantly clear that she wasn’t wearing a bra and Harrow jerked her gaze away. She looked at the pure white of the roses. And at the thorns beneath.

“Alright, so,” Gideon said. “As my truest and bestest friend, what can you tell me about this upcoming Ninth House business? And what do you know about Cyth’s nanites?”

“Well. Because the Ascension project is old technology, we’re hoping to find some relevant information in the archives, which are off-limits to students. The library will be closed and relatively empty during the dance, so that is the ideal time to break into it to steal information. As for Cytherea…” Harrow frowned again, picturing clearly the long earrings, the amused, sidelong glances, and the appallingly mainstream fashions that the otherwise pretty-ish Seventh house girl always wore. “Cytherea used to have the same affliction as Dulcinea. She underwent an experimental procedure that used nanites to cure her, but there were some strange complications. She had the nanites purged… allegedly. I don’t know why she is reacting now, but I’m sure we’ll hear more about it tomorrow. Sextus and Hect are visiting her in the clinic.”

“And meanwhile, my grandpa is still in a jar.”

“He is imaged on a hard disk, yes.” Harrow fussed with the lace edging on her skirt, her fingers twitching with nervous energy. She would have been pacing again except that she did not want to get off of the bed that Gideon was on. “We haven’t had any luck getting more information out of him, however, so I still don’t know how he got there or why he is there or if that image of him is even complete.”

“Who’s ‘we’?” Gideon asked. “You and Ortus?”

“Yes. The two of us, and the Sixth, are the only ones who know about the image of your grandfather.”

“And me,” Gideon pointed out. “And whoever put him there.”

“If they’re still alive,” Harrow cautioned. “It’s old tech. The technicians who did the transfer might have died, or been killed.”

“How’d _you_ know about it?” Gideon asked, and her voice held a bit of wonder in it that warmed Harrow’s cheeks.

Mindful of her promise to be truthful, Harrow gathered her thoughts carefully before answering. “Palamedes, Ortus, and I all have something in common.”

“Weird names,” Gideon said seriously.

Harrow shot her a glare. Gideon really was infuriating. It was deeply unfortunate that she was also attractive and worthy. “The three of us discovered the existence of the Ascension project. A secret research project that would allow people to upload their minds to machines.”

“How did you find out about it?”

“We are incredibly inquisitive,” Harrow said shortly, “and do not ask me for more information on that issue.” She had absolutely no intention of explaining the difference between white hat and black hat hacking to Gideon, nor did she intend to chronicle her own descent from the former to the latter. “The important detail is that the three of us, through our own means, found details about the project and, in doing so, found each other. We agreed to work together, which lead to Palamedes and I joining Ortus here.”

“So you’ve known them for a while?” Gideon asked, surprised. “But how do you know there aren’t more people who know about it? I mean if you three figured it out, maybe someone else did, too?”

“No one else has, to our knowledge.” Harrow had often wondered the same thing. It was a strange feeling to be in such a small group, alone in the world. “It’s possible that they have, but they were cautious enough that we did not find them. Anyone less cautious than us would probably have been found out by the government and silenced.”

"You think this is a government conspiracy, then?”

That made Harrow laugh, a short bark of released tension. “No! No, we’d all be dead if that were the case. We believe it started as one, probably, but that it was abandoned by the Party. There was a cover up of some kind. But the original research happened here, and it’s possible that it carried on in secret. We intend to find out how far it went.”

“Cool.” Gideon frowned. “But what does all that have to do with my family?”

“I don’t _know_ yet,” Harrow said, her shoulders slumping in defeat. “But I have a strong suspicion that the two projects are linked.”

“What projects?” Gideon sat up off the pillows, leaning towards her. “You only mentioned one.”

“The second project is not a secret, as such, but it is probably much worse than the public knows. It’s the Cavalier enhancement. Nanites.” Gideon’s face was still obliviously blank so Harrow tried to explain. It was difficult to find the words, since she had never tried to explain it to someone who knew nothing about it before. “Ascension to the Machine State is totally different tech from nanite enhancement, but they both have common roots in neural integration.”

“At least four of those words made sense,” Gideon said.

Harrow scowled at her. She knew Gideon wasn’t a genius but she wasn’t completely stupid either. She just liked to exaggerate her incomprehension to annoy Harrow. Probably. “There is modern brain magic and ancient brain magic, but they’re both brain magic.”

“Okay! See, now you’re making sense. So you guys are at school studying new brain magic, and as a fun side project you’re like, researching ancient brain magic.” Gideon canted her head to one side. “This sounds like that cartoon where the kids end up summoning a demon by accident.”

“If you could make a giant effort and not be utterly absurd for once, I would appreciate it,” Harrow said dryly. “I’m trying to explain something complicated in short, simple words for you, Griddle.”

“I know, and it’s great.” Gideon’s jackass smirk was back. Infuriating. “You hate it when people understand what you’re saying.”

“That is completely inaccurate.” Harrow crossed her arms again, lest she take up one of Gideon’s crayons and fling it into her stupid handsome face. “And it’s distracting you from the point I am trying to make.”

“That my family is hella magical,” Gideon said, nodding like this made perfect sense.

“No!” Harrow shouted. “Actually, maybe. You’re such an- a Cavalier,” she said, trying to fill the ‘title’ with all the invective she usually got into a heartfelt ‘idiot’.

“Humour your poor foolish cav with a dumbed-down explanation, O Mighty Sorcerer of the Sunless Peaks.”

Heat rushed to Harrow’s face again and she pressed her fingertips to her temples, trying to concentrate. “Agreeing to be your friend was a hideous lapse in judgement.”

“Maybe, but your judgement could use a few lapses.”

“What.”

“You’re very judgey, Harrow.”

Harrow turned her baleful glare on Gideon. “I’m judging right now.”

Gideon’s smile was unrepentant. “Am I magic too?” 

Harrow froze, her brain stalling as she tried to think of a way to answer that truthfully. 

“Harrow?” Gideon’s amusement fell away, replaced with concern. 

Harrow realized her own expression was one of dismay and, too late, tried to smooth over her features. “Ask me something else.”

“Hell no! Hang on.” Gideon closed the distance between them, moving awkwardly with one broken arm, scattering crayons on the black duvet. “You said I was perfectly fine, before.”

“I said you were perfect,” Harrow admitted. Gideon’s good hand was planted flat on the bed between them. Their shoulders were almost touching. “I believe…” Why was this so difficult to say? Harrow swallowed and tried again. “I believe that you have advanced, and possibly experimental, nanites integrated into your nervous system. They help you heal quickly and keep you healthy and - and please don’t ask me more than that. Not yet.” Don’t make me talk about how your parents died Harrow pleaded silently. Don’t make me say that my parents were the ones who killed them. 

“Okay,” Gideon answered slowly. “But. I mean. Okay, if I have new magic on me, then what wizard put it there? Y'know? How’d it happen?”

“Yes, that's what we need to find out,” Harrow agreed, latching onto this new topic eagerly. “Your father likely had the observation nanites that Cavaliers get, but those are not meant to be passed on to children. Allegedly, anyways. But the others think you might have gotten these from your mother, or from experiments done during implantation.”

“Oh God.” Gideon’s face was grey. “What if it was your parents? What if they did something to me? Put their shit inside me?”

“No!” Harrow couldn’t bear the fear and dread on Gideon’s face. She turned towards her, raising a hand to grab a hold of Gideon’s collar. “It wasn’t them! Listen to me, Griddle. You’ve had these since before I was born, and likely before you were even born. Your mother was already pregnant with you when she arrived. I think she came specifically to hide you, to protect you from something. And my parents don’t understand what magic you have, because they keep asking me to watch you for signs of it. They don’t understand you. In fact,” she added more quietly, “I think they’re afraid of you.”

“That feeling is mutual.” Gideon’s voice was raw. Harrow belatedly released her grip but before she could pull away, Gideon had wrapped her arms around her in a sudden hug. 

Harrow had no clue what to do with her hands. She tried not to move, feeling breathless, hot and dizzy. 

Gideon squeezed her, uncomfortably hard, then slowly loosened her hold. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “Its just…”

“No,” Harrow blurted. “I mean - it's okay. You’ve had a profound psychological shock, you need a moment of comfort.”

“You mean a hug?” Gideon’s arms were so warm around her. 

“Yes.” Hesitantly, Harrow leaned in, one degree at a time, until she was pressed against Gideon’s chest and she could raise one hand to pat her awkwardly on the side. “You deserve a hug.”

Gideon laughed, a short, mirthless sound. “You too, you touch-starved little gremlin.”

“Hey!” Harrow yelped as Gideon leaned back, effortlessly pulling Harrow up to sit in her lap. “I,” she managed as Gideon’s arms found a comfortable fit around her waist, “I believe that gremlin counts as name calling.”

“Yeah? Then you can call me one back so it's fair.”

“Idiot,” Harrow murmured helplessly, and let her head rest on Gideon’s shoulder.


	17. What the Actual Fuck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morning in the residence. A hospital visit.

“You’re looking chipper today,” Cam noted.

Gideon grinned, filling her cereal bowl to the brim with multicoloured marshmallows (fortified with six essential nutrients, so they were probably good for her). “It’s a nice day outside. I’m in a good mood.”

Camilla smiled over the rim of her mug of tea. “It’s cloudy.”

“Right?” Gideon fished out the chocolate milk and saturated the fruity-Ohs. “Perfect weather. I won’t get sweaty in my jacket but it’s nice enough to go outside.” 

The soft sound of Harrow’s door opening distracted both cavs. Camilla barely moved, but her eyes and her full attention slid over the steaming surface of her mug to watch Early Morning Harrow shamble from her crypt. Gideon was less subtle, turning to face her Dark Lady of the Night, and held her cereal bowl under her chin to shovel the sugary mess into her mouth as she looked Nonagesimus over.

Harrow was in what passed for pyjamas, to her. It looked like black thermal underwear, really, formless and soft and hanging off of her narrow frame. Her dark hair was tousled and her eyes were puffy, just focused enough to let her navigate in a semi conscious state towards the kitchen. The little nerd really was a night owl. It was adorable. “Oh, hey, Harrow,” she said in her best bright-and-chipper voice, because watching Harrow slowly cringe in annoyance was hilarious. “You’re up early!”

“Morning class,” Harrow hissed, shuffling to the fridge. 

“You want some toast?” Gideon said, not moving even though she was in the way.

Harrow shuffled up to Gideon and paused, squinting at her as her half conscious brain slowly registered that there was an obstacle in her path. “No.”

Gideon turned to watch Harrow as she shuffled around her to get to the fridge. “You drink that nutrient sludge every day. It can’t be good for you.”

“You,” Harrow said, getting the fridge door open on her second yank, “are eating literal garbage. You are not an authority on nutrition.”

“But it’s just like, paste,” Gideon protested. She looked to Camilla for backup.

“I’m on her side,” Cam said. “Watching you eat that is giving me diabetes.”

“It’s got actual flavour!” Gideon took a few more slurpy mouthfuls as Harrow popped the top off of a glorified protein shake (there couldn’t possibly be 97 nutrients in that thing) and sat next to Camilla at the small table. 

Cam gave her a nod and blew on her tea. She had already cooked herself an omelette, eaten it, and cleaned up after herself. But only herself. 

“Where’s Doctor Love?” Gideon asked her.

“Palamedes,” Cam said the name with a tone of censure at Gideon, “is at Dulcinea’s.’

“She okay?” Gideon asked around a mouthful of cereal. “I heard she was sick yesterday.”

“She had a flare up. It happens.”

Harrow frowned, and started drinking her canned meal supplement. 

“Chug, chug, chug,” Gideon chanted quietly.

Harrow flipped her off without breaking stride, and finished the small can in one long pull. 

“That stuff is so nasty,” Gideon complained, eating her sugar bombs. 

Harrow ignored her, turning instead to Camilla with a frown. “How is Cytherea?”

Camilla glanced at Gideon - no, actually, she had glanced at the taped over microwave - before answering. “She had a rough night. The medical eval said it was a non-contagious infection, possibly of the kidneys due to an undiagnosed UTI.” 

Gideon didn’t know what a yewtieye was but it didn’t matter, because Camilla was slowly shaking her head ‘no’ and giving them a thumbs down. 

“She probably just needs a few days rest and some antibiotics,” Cam said, again shaking her head with a frown.

There was a moment of silence as Gideon failed to read Camilla’s mind and, consequently, had no idea what was going on. 

“That’s good,” Harrow said, in the sleepy half-awake voice that implied she had barely registered the information and didn’t care. Which was absolutely not true because she was fully alert now, and Gideon could tell by her focused little scowl that Nonagesimus machinations were going on inside that skull of hers. Harrow rose from the table, her movements more deliberate and focused as she tossed her can in the recycler and hit the buttons to get herself a mug of coffee. Black, naturally. 

It was only because Gideon really wanted to know what was going on that she said “Hey, Harrow, I’ll walk you to class.”

“What?” Harrow’s expression was beautifully startled. She hadn’t expected that! “Why?” 

Cam sipped her tea, smiling.

“I dunno. I’ll carry your books for you,” Gideon shrugged.

“I don’t have textbooks,” Harrow said. “Printing knowledge is senseless, it is obsolete before the manual even ships.”

“I’ll carry you, then,” Gideon grinned.

Harrow clutched her mug of coffee in front of her now, like a tiny hot shield. “Your arm is broken.”

Gideon scoffed, accidentally spitting a bit of milk. “I could easily carry you one handed.”

Harrow’s expression was as black as her flannel jammies, and she raised her chin with a dignity that radiated from her soul. “You may walk _beside_ me, if you wish. I have no means of stopping you.”

“At your side, my lady!” Gideon grinned, saluting with her spoon. 

Harrow turned back to her room, muttering imprecations, but that was okay. Muttering imprecations was one of her natural states. And anyway, Cam was giving Gideon a thumbs up. 

* * *

“Griddle, you need to be more subtle.”

“Subtle?” Gideon frowned down at Harrow as they walked across the meticulously groomed grass of Canaan’s campus. “I’m subtle. What did I do that wasn’t subtle? Was it the rubber ducks?”

“Those are ridiculous and garish, but they are not what I was referring to.”

“I thought you’d like ‘em,” Gideon grinned. She had made a bulk order for 100 punk rubber duckies and decorated the incredibly boring bathroom with them, mostly by tying them together with some string to make duck garlands that hung from the ceiling tiles. Camilla had said it was fine as long as none landed in the toilet. “I even put the goth ones down lower by the mirror so you’d see ‘em.”

“I’m not _that_ short,” Harrow muttered, glaring at a robot grass mower as it whirred past them. 

“You’re pretty short, dude.”

Harrow’s suspicious glare followed the mower until it was far enough away to suit her before she looked up at Gideon. “I mean,” she continued, her voice much quieter, “what happened back in the apartment. I asked about Cytherea and two seconds later you were asking to walk me to class.”

"That - hang on, that’s not why I said I’d walk with you,” Gideon said.

“Well then why else would you say that? It will appear to the watchers that one thing led to another.”

Why _had_ she said it, if not to pester Harrow for information? Gideon frowned, not used to over-analyzing every damn thing that was said. “You’re making this way more complicated that it is. I just felt like enjoying the nice morning weather with you.” 

Harrow stopped abruptly, pinching the bridge of her nose. “This isn’t going to work.”

“What won’t?” 

“We’ve been either disinterested or antagonistic to each other since arriving. Our entire fight was overheard the first day when I arrived. For us to be suddenly close friends now is suspicious.”

“But we _are_ friends now,” Gideon protested, a little lost. “Are you saying you don’t want to be friends?”

“No! No,” Harrow repeated, turning her earnest, pointy chinned face up to Gideon. “I’m saying that our friendship was precipitated by the clandestine events we’ve both been involved in. If it weren’t for,” she paused, searching for words.

“Ninth House business?” Gideon supplied.

“Yes. Fine.” Harrow smoothed down her poofy skirts. “If it wasn’t for that, we likely would not have become friends. Or at least, not as quickly,” she added in a tone that was probably a lot more tentative than what she wanted to sound like. “I’m just trying to keep you safe, Griddle.”

“I’m fine! I’m safe,” Gideon insisted. “What’s not safe about me?”

“This entire situation is more complex and more dangerous than you give it credit for,” Harrow said, heading towards the Ninth House crypts again. “I’m working on a way to manage our new understanding but in the meantime try to stay in character.”

“In character?” Gideon rolled her eyes. “Just tell me what you want me to do.”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you could stand to spend more time thinking about the girl you were kissing last night.”

“Cyth?” Gideon felt like this abrupt shift in the conversation was particularly unfair but couldn’t have said why. It made her feel guilty, though, like she had been caught at something. “I think about her!”

“You asked about Palamedes and Dulcinea this morning but I was the one who asked about Cytherea,” Harrow pointed out.

Gideon tried to remember the context of what she had said an hour ago, but she hadn’t really been paying much attention until Cam started making the secret spy gestures. “What *is* going on with Cyth anyway? Camilla didn’t make any sense.”

“Perhaps you should go visit her,” Harrow said, and sounded snippy about it. “Since she’s caught your attention so effectively, it would be in character for you to go and ask about her in person.”

“Yeah…. yeah! Good idea.” Gideon brightened. She’d bring Cytherea some flowers and see if she could figure out what was going on at the same time. That would probably make Harrow happy. “I’ll go see her right now.”

“You do that,” Harrow said, “once you’ve finished walking me to class.”

Gideon laughed, relieved. “As you command, my Umbral Sovereign.”

***

Allan was on Greenhouse duty, so getting flowers wasn’t hard. All he wanted to do was arm wrestle her for them, and as far as Gideon was concerned if people wanted to line up to get their asses whooped in exchange for goods and services then she’d be happy to whoop ‘em. She was pretty careful though, not to beat him _too_ badly. She didn’t want to break his arm or something. He even lent her a watering jug to put them in too, so Cyth could keep them in her hospital room. 

That was the plan, anyway. Things at the clinic weren’t quite so simple. 

“The patient is resting right now. Visitors are not permitted.”

Gideon scowled at the damn bipedal unit blocking the way to Cytherea’s door. She knew it was the right door because she had seen Protesilaus in the lobby. He looked like how she imagined someone who looked like “absolute dogshit” ought to look, and he had shaken his head at her. “She’s in room 212,” he had said, “but they won’t let you in.”

And now here she was, in a pristine hallway so quiet that it seemed deserted. Deserted except for a damn training dummy in a nurse’s scrubs playing at being a bouncer.

“I won’t wake her up,” Gideon said, trying to summon some patience. She wished Harrow was with her. Harrow could have wiggled her fingers at this stiff necked fucker and made it do a jig. “I’ll just sneak in and put the flowers beside her. She’ll be happy to see them when she wakes up! That’ll be good for her. It’ll speed her recovery by like, three percent, I’m pretty sure.”

“The patient is resting right now. Visitors are not permitted.”

Gideon considered her options. She didn’t want to wrestle the thing in the hallway, because it could run off for help. She didn’t want it in the room with her, because there was nothing romantic about grappling with a robot assailant as you tried to give flowers to a pretty girl.

Actually that was hella romantic. But not practical, and the flailing might hurt Cyth. 

“Can I leave the flowers here in the hall?” Gideon asked, mostly to keep the bot talking. General population interface units tended to have a long fuse if you were acting reasonable. 

“I am afraid that tripping hazards are not permitted,” the robot answered in a soulless, vaguely feminine voice.

“So if I put the flowers on the ground, and leave, will you come pick them up and throw them out?” Gideon wondered.

“I would be obliged to clear the hall of any obstacles. Please do not leave items unattended in the clinic halls. Excuse me. It is not permitted to leave objects on the ground. Please remove your item. You may not leave that there.”

Gideon glanced up and down the hall. The improvised vase was on the ground next to room 213, which was, she saw, unoccupied. She opened the door.

“Excuse me,” the robot protested, coming over to her. “It is not permitted for visitors to enter unoccupied rooms. It presents a cleaning hazard.” 

Closer, Gideon thought. Come on, buddy.

“I must ask you to leave the -” 

The robot’s voice was cut off with a satisfying PTONG sound as Gideon abruptly roundhouse kicked the thing in its center of mass, sending it flying back into room 213. She slammed the door closed, grabbed her flowers, and sprinted to 212, shoving the door open and slamming it behind her. 

“Gideon?” Cytherea was sitting in bed, a discarded novel beside her. 

“Does this door lock?” Gideon asked quickly, holding the handle but not seeing a bolt on it. 

“No,” Cyth said, and her voice sounded clear and unmuddled, thank god. “But it opens inward. Grab the chair.”

Gideon hooked her foot into the simple visitor’s chair and hauled it over as the robot, evidently quick to recover from a simple ass kicking, rattled the door from the other side. She had to hold the edge of the plastic watering jug in her teeth for a second and was half blinded by the roses, but she managed to wedge the chair under the handle. 

“That’ll hold him for at least thirty seconds,” she said, hurrying to Cytherea’s side. 

“What are you doing?” Cytherea stared at her, then the roses, then the rattling door. 

“I wanted to see you!” Gideon grinned as she set the jug of red roses on the side table. “I hope they let you keep these even though I kicked my way in here.”

“Gideon.” Cytherea’s smile was completely charmed and utterly charming. “I’m flattered that you’d go to such lengths to come see me.”

“How are you?” Gideon sat on the edge of the bed, and Cytherea’s slender hands found their way naturally into hers. 

“I’ve been better.” Cytherea’s skin, normally thin as paper, with the purple veins showing beneath, looked especially pale under the bright lights. The only colour was twin spots of bright pink on her cheeks. Like a kid had put blush on. Or like she still had a fever. Her hands were cool to the touch, though. “I’m afraid we won’t have a very long visit today,” Cytherea said, her voice quiet as she leaned back against her pillows again. “May I ask you for a small favour before you’re hauled away for detention?”

“Anything,” Gideon promised.

“May I have one more kiss, Gideon Nav?”

“Damn,” Gideon said with feeling. Cytherea was so soft and vulnerable looking, so delicate. She wished she could scoop her up and carry her away from her sickness. She wished she could fight something to make this better. She could do neither. 

She leaned in, and gave Cytherea a soft, earnest kiss. 

It was as deliciously electric as their first had been, charged with Cytherea’s eagerness pushing the boundaries of Gideon’s restraint. She kept her hands planted on the bed on either side of the pillows but Cytherea reached up with her ballerina’s arms and wrapped them around Gideon’s neck. As the kiss softly broke she pulled Gideon close, so her breath was warm against her ear.

“Get me out of here before they kill me. Don’t trust Pro. They got him.”

Gideon froze.

Cytherea sighed and slid her hands to Gideon’s face, pulling it around for another kiss. Numbly now, Gideon let her. 

What the actual fuck?

The chair fell with a clatter, and instantly scraped across the floor as the door was shoved open. 

Gideon didn’t look around. Her eyes were fixed on Cytherea. 

She had a wan smile on her face as she leaned back, a flush on her neck now. “Thank you,” she said, and closed her eyes.

“Hey!” A man’s voice came from the doorway, and the note of challenge in it made Gideon finally turn away from the Seventh girl to get back on her feet.

The fucking robot was picking up the chair and putting it away, fussily arranging it. But behind the fucking robot was a doctor, probably, from the white lab coat and fancy name tag.

“What the hell is going on in here?” he demanded. “Get out of this room immediately.”

“Alright, alright,” Gideon gave in, spotting another orderly of some kind lurking in the hallway. The fuzz had arrived. “I’m leaving. You know, you guys should really put locks on these doors.”

“Young lady, it is totally unacceptable to force your way into a patient’s room. Get out of the clinic.”

Gideon obeyed, in part because she had accomplished her mission (sort of?) and in part because the guy’s name tag identified him as _Dr. Sex_ and she desperately wanted to find Palamedes and assure him that if this absolute legend could be a doctor, everything would be ok for poor SexPal.


	18. Nerds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Why was Six afraid for Seven? Because Seven kissed Nine.

“Nav! Hey, Gideon!” 

Gideon stopped halfway down the path that led from the Sixth House clinic to her residence. Protesilaus was jogging after her, and she watched him carefully as he approached. His skin was sallow and waxy and his eyes looked like he had just marathoned six seasons of Attack of the Deadly Bone Ghosts without sleeping.

“Hey,” she greeted him. “You look like ass, by the way.”

He ignored that. “What did she say?”

“Hunh?” _Don’t trust Pro. They got him._ “Who, Cyth?”

“Yes, Cytherea.” 

Pro stepped closer and Gideon found herself taking a half step back, mentally evaluating how far the nearest buildings were, glancing to other students walking on campus and wondering if they’d help or just watch if things went wrong. “Well,” she hedged. “She was sleeping when I showed up, so I wasn’t allowed in.”

“But you went in anyway,” he pressed. Had he blinked at all since he ran up? “What did she say?”

Gideon tried to think of a lie — then remembered Harrow’s advice. Start with what he knew was true, then hide a lie inside it. “Okay, so, I did see her,” she confessed. “I had to kick a robot in the ass to get into her room, but I saw her.” This got no reaction, which was kind of disappointing. Pro should have approved of a robot’s ass getting das boot. “And uh, she was awake, and I gave her the roses, and she said she was flattered that I’d come to see her… and then I kissed her.”

That made him blink, finally, thank god. “You kissed her?”

“Yup. Twice. Then they got the door un-jammed and kicked me out.”

Protesilaus grunted and blessedly lost the rabid look in his eyes. “Oh. Then she didn’t say anything to you.”

In a normal conversation, Gideon probably would have said something like “why, what did you expect her to say” or maybe “hey, she said she was happy to see me, that was something” or possibly even “what the hell crawled up your butt anyway?” But today was not a normal day, and this was not a normal Pro, and she suddenly wanted to be far away. 

So she said “yop,” and, “bye!” And took two quick steps back out of reach before smoothly pivoting and breaking into a very brisk jog away from him. 

Gideon went straight to her res. She wanted to see Harrow but her sepulchral robo-witch was in a lab until half past eleven so she looked for one of the Sixth, who knew everything, or Dulcinea, who at least wouldn’t want Cytherea to die. Luck finally decided to be Gideon’s Lady again, because all three of them were chilling in the living room. 

The scene was domestic as they greeted her. Cam was seated on the floor with her back against the couch, a heavy textbook open on her lap, as Dulcie sat behind her doing her hair into short braids with beaded ends. Palamedes was curled up like a bookish cat beside Dulcie, holding a tablet, and his shiny silver nails said that the Seventh had already had her way with him. 

“The silver matches your glasses,” Gideon said. “How are you guys doing?” 

“We’re all well,” Dulcinea said. Cam had caught Gideon’s eye and, sensing that something was amiss with her mad psychic abilities, gently touched Dulcie’s leg as a signal for her to stop. Dulcinea was already putting away her beads, though. SexPal just blinked owlishly at the ladies as they both rose — Cam rolling to her feet, then offering Dulcinea a hand up. 

“What have you been up to, Gideon?” Dulcinea asked sweetly. She didn’t sound worried at all. Maybe Camilla was supposed to only have half of her hair in braids? Was that a look?

“Oh, well. I visited Cyth at the clinic. Sort of got banned from the place in the process, but I’m sure it’s temporary.”

“You got banned from the clinic?” Palamedes sat up, letting his feet fall to the floor with twin thumps. “For what?”

“I may have gently and responsibly relocated a biped unit with my boot.”

“Are you in trouble?” Cam asked, and from the look on her face she was ready to throw down with robots. Or throw Gideon to the robots, depending. 

“I mean, the front desk guy told me that if I didn’t show up as a patient, I’d end up as one? Which I think was unofficial… probably.”

“Sounds like Malcolm,” Cam said, relaxing fractionally. “I want to check your cast. Come with me.”

“Yes ma’am,” Gideon agreed, relieved that Cam had thought of some kind of subtle excuse to talk away from Registraria’s Dread Hearing. Gideon nodded for the other two to follow and a moment later they were all in Cam’s meticulously tidy room. Dulcinea had brought her little jar of beads, and the two of them resumed their positions using the desk chair, while Palamedes sat on the edge of the bed and used his tablet to turn on some ambient music. Gideon remained standing, like she was giving a report. 

She may as well have been from how Palamedes now looked at her. “What happened?”

“Pro was in the waiting room, looking like dogshit. Sorry, Dulcie,” Gideon added at the girl’s wince.

“He had a rough night,” Dulcie said. “I don’t think he slept much.”

“If there’s an opposite of sleep, he did that,” Gideon agreed. “He said they wouldn’t let me in, and they didn’t. I kicked the bipedal aid into a spare room and snuck into Cyth’s room.”

“Gideon!” Palamedes protested.

“And she said to jam the door with a chair,” Gideon pressed on, “and that she was flattered. And she asked me for a kiss. And I kissed her, and then, she whispered ‘Get me out of here before they kill me. Don’t trust Pro, they already got him.’ And then she kissed me again before I did something dumb like ask her a question about that cryptic shit, and Dr. Sex showed up and kicked me out. Have you met him? He’s paving the way for future sex legends, Palamedes.”

“Before they _kill her?” _Dulcinea demanded. “WHO got to Pro?”

“I dunno but he was acting weird, after.” Gideon shifted her weight, and realized she was getting ready to dodge that glass jar of beads if the pixie wielding it decided to turn it into a projectile. “He chased me down and asked me what Cyth had said. I didn’t tell him, I just said we smooched. But he was weirdly intense about it.”

“Since when are you smooching my cousin?” Dulcinea demanded. 

“I mean,” Gideon said, “she was on Greenhouse duty last night right, cause you were sick, and I needed roses for Harrow, so she traded a kiss for em.”

“Cytherea,” Dulcinea said in the exact same tone you scold a cat with while the cat is simultaneously maintaining eye contact and knocking your glass off the table.

Cam and Pal were exchanging looks that carried a 150Mb/s download speed. It was Palamedes that spoke first.

“Nav, do you mean that you kissed her last night? Right before she fell ill?”

“Yes?” Gideon felt distinctly cornered by all three of their piercing gazes now. The door was at her back but she’d never make it with Cam right there. “I didn’t make her sick, if that’s what you mean. I’m not sick, I’m fine. I’m perfect.”

“Did you kiss Protesilaus, too?” Camilla asked.

“No!” Gideon said over Dulcie’s squawk. “What?”

Palamedes looked to Dulcinea, his grey eyes fully alert. “I know its not likely, but is there any chance he and Cytherea—?”

“No way,” Dulcie said. “She’s a second sister to him, and he’s gayer than Gideon.”

“Woah, hey,” Gideon said. “First, that’s impossible, also, what is going on?”

“This is absurd.” Camilla rose, carefully disengaging from Dulcinea to address Gideon properly. “Has Harrow told you her suspicions yet?”

“Dude, you need to be waaay more specific.”

“That you may have nanites in your bloodstream?” Palamedes said.

“Oh! Yeah.” Camilla’s frown mellowed from Impending Violence to Strong Disapproval as Gideon spoke. “She said I have some, probably, that let me heal fast and stuff. Which is all the more reason why I didn’t make anyone sick.”

“Except that a fever and delirium can also be a sign of a nanite cascade.” Palamedes spoke faster, his long fingers pressed firmly together. “If your nanites were also present in your saliva, it's possible that some were transferred to Cytherea when she kissed you.”

Camilla shook her head. “Cytherea wasn’t just mildly feverish or tired. There was a battle raging inside her. And if she did have residual nanites from her cure—”

“Cure,” Dulcinea muttered sarcastically, her expression dark.

“If she did still have a resident population,” Camilla pressed on, “there’s no way that enough of a load carried over through a few kisses to cause a war.”

“What war?” Gideon said, trying to follow for once and still finding herself lost. 

“It’s a known problem with immunization nanites,” Palamedes explained. “They’re not native to the body so when you have more than one type of nanite inside you, sometimes they target each other. When they destroy each other it causes a heat discharge. Individually, of course, the thermal load of a nanite is negligible but when you have two full populations battling it can cause a high fever, or worse.”

“But there’s no way she got enough of a competing load,” Camilla insisted. She gave Gideon a sharp look. “Is there more you’re not telling us? Did she drink your blood or something?”

“No!” Gideon’s voice came out strangled. “What the fuck?”

“There’s one way a small dose could trigger a full cascade.” Dulcinea was still seated, her expression thoughtful as she glanced sidelong at Palamedes. “We should remain open to all possible explanations, no matter how unlikely.”

“Prion action,” Palamedes breathed, like it was a prayer to the rising sun of Dulcie’s gaze.

“What the fuck?” Gideon complained.

Camilla muttered “shit,” with a heartfelt sincerity that was in no way comforting.

“I'm going to get my microscope,” Palamedes said springing up. 

Gideon stole his spot on the bed because she deserved it after this nerdery. 

“Camilla, stay here,” Dulcinea said, getting out her tablet with brisk efficiency. “I’m calling my mother.”

Cam nodded, crossing her arms. 

There was a ringing sound, then the tablet spoke in an accented, matronly voice. “Dulcinea?”

“Mama,” Dulcie began, and then kept speaking, but in _a different language._ Gideon had never heard a real live person speak anything other than Anglostandard. She watched, bemused and a little turned on, as the delicate Seventh girl spoke dramatically, gesturing with her hands often, her voice rising and falling in a hypnotic cadence as lilting, lyrical words tumbled from her lips. 

Several times her mother interrupted in an equally dramatic voice, once just to cry out “Ohh! Ohh!” in wordless dismay. When Dulcie was finished her speech, her mother just said something that sounded like “Aman. Eenay Camille aykee?”

Dulcinea handed the tablet to Cam, and then Cam _also spoke the other language._

Cam’s speech was much shorter (and less dramatic), and Gideon recognized Cytherea’s name before Cam handed the tablet back to Dulcinea. 

Then a man joined the woman on the other line and the entire performance was repeated.

Then a grandparent got on the line too. Sextus showed back up and started fiddling with a microscope on the desk. Then the people on the tablet saw him and wanted to talk to him, so Cam finished setting up the microscope while SexPal talked to his BestPal’s Parents in alternating Good Boy and Serious Doctor tones. 

Eventually Dulcie took the tablet back and wandered out of the room with it, still speaking loudly to what sounded like five cousins on the other line. The only words Gideon recognized were swear words.

Gideon looked between Palamedes and Camilla, in awe. “How many languages do you speak?” 

“Seven,” he said.

“Five,” she said, and handed Gideon a small glass plate. “Spit on this.”

Dulcinea came back in a few minutes later, her tablet now silent, and took a seat beside Gideon on the bed. Palamedes didn’t look up at her entrance, he was completely absorbed by whatever he saw through the microscope. 

“So?” Cam said once she had locked the door.

“They're going to come get her,” Dulcinea said with satisfaction. “I think my Mama got the message after I compared Cytherea to aunt Cassie.” She added as an explanation for Gideon’s benefit, “my aunt Cassie died due to medical malpractice. I basically told my family that they're doing the same thing to Cyth.”

“Yeah… I dunno if it's malpractice.” Gideon moved Cam’s pillow so Dulcie could lean back against it against the wall. “You sure they'll let her go?”

“My mother is on the board of governors of the clinic, and my uncle is the current chair of the ethical oversight committee. They’ll get her out.” 

“Cam,” Palamedes said, already standing as she pivoted to his side. “Quick, observe this.”

Pal held himself half out of the chair, frozen at an awkward angle as Camilla peered into the microscope. Dulcinea and Gideon watched in dead silence for an absolute eternity. At least thirty seconds. Civilizations rose and fell. Finally Cam stood up, and Pal relaxed back into the desk chair.

“At the end of its life cycle?” Cam suggested.

“Maybe,” Pal said. “Except that all four that I saw were doing that.”

“It looked like an endogenous lyse. Did you see any other types?”

“No and I don’t recognize this one from any inventories.”

Gideon turned to Dulcinea and just _stared._

She patted Gideon's hand gently. “It sounds like they found some nanites!”

“Yes, but they’re all self -destructing,” Palamedes complained.

“Probably because they can tell you’re trying to spy on them,” Gideon said sarcastically. 

Pal and Cam exchanged another high bandwidth look. “Oxygen?” Cam said.

“Or light.” Palamedes sat back in the chair, swivelling it back and forth idly.

“True, there'd be oxygen in the bloodstream.” Camilla frowned, rocking her weight to the balls of her feet and back to the heels as she thought. “If they’re not exclusively lymphatic.”

“Your mom's exclusively lymphatic,” Gideon muttered. 

“Cam has two dads,” Dulcinea told her, impish glee behind the sweet smile.

“Can I go?” Gideon said, absolutely definitely not whining at all.

“No,” Cam said, because she was a pill. The pensive frown hadn’t left her face, and she absently started pulling out the braids that Dulcie had put into her hair. “Harrow was right about the nanites. But was she also right about you being able to use them?”

“Yes!” Palamedes brightened, swivelling away from his microscope to peer at Gideon, as if she was about to tell him all about these nanites that she had just found out about the day before. “Harrowhark said you could calm yourself down. Or warm yourself up with them.”

“I’ve never done that,” Gideon said flatly. “I didn’t even know I had them, how could I have been using them?”

“Pretend it’s cold,” Palamedes suggested. “See if you heat up!”

Gideon rolled her eyes. “Boy it sure is cold in here. All this snow, blizzarding it up in the res. Gonna be a mess to clean up. Maybe I’ll make a snow man, doo de doo.” She mimed with jerky, sarcastic motions, patting imaginary snow into a ball. 

“Gideon,” Dulcinea chided.

“Avert your eyes, baby, I’m gonna make this snowman anatomically correct.”

“Alright, now you can go,” Camilla said, and turned away.

Gideon jumped to her feet, wanting nothing more than to find Harrow and shake some answers out of her. She’d have shaken Palamedes but Cam would kick her ass, so that nerd was out. “I’m surprised you’re not trying to get a blood sample too.”

“Oh,” Palamedes said, “I absolutely will want one later. But I don’t have the equipment necessary to pull nanites from blood at the moment. Especially if we need to take extra precautions, like preventing light or air from touching the sample.”

“It could also be body temperature,” Camilla pointed out, already disassembling the microscope.

Palamedes frowned. “We might need to take a few samples.”

“Sixth House confirmed for being secret vampires,” Gideon said, and left to go find her friend.


	19. Gideon Nav, Cavalier

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gideon goes to the Ninth House Crypt.

It was only eleven in the morning, but Gideon was already tired. The cloudy sky from that morning had darkened into an ominous iron grey above her, threatening rain as she hustled her butt across the campus towards the Ninth Crypt, looking for Harrow. The adrenaline from the clinic had worn off and the sense of urgency that Cytherea’s message had filled her with was gone. She had handed that hot potato of a mission off to the Sixth (and Dulcie) and they were going to handle it but it had all left her feeling oddly drained and restless. 

She wanted to pick a fight or have a nap. Surprising Harrow by waiting for her after her class was the third best option.

The Ninth House building was small, with a dusty lounge, three small classrooms and a bathroom off the main lobby. Gideon hadn’t been inside before so she stood in the gloomy hall, looking around and playing the ‘lets judge people based on their living room furniture’ game. The chairs? Black plastic. Sitting in them probably cursed you with butt pain. The walls were a dark purple that made the whole place feel like a cave, and the lights set into the black tiled ceilings were shrouded with a warm filter that softened them to the point of near-uselessness. There was a promising armoire by the stairs that looked like it must conceal skeletons in eveningwear but when Gideon peeked inside she found a perfectly modern candy machine. It was sold out of cheesy puffs but overstocked on Nature’s Health bars. 

Around the corner beyond the stairs was a bright point of interest: a simple sign that read GYM with an arrow. Gideon followed it eagerly, wondering what kind of accommodations the Ninth would have. They couldn’t be worse than the South Frigging Pole, surely.

It turns out they could, and they certainly would have been it if weren’t for the saving grace of a saltwater hot tub. It seemed that Ortus, or the House itself, had gotten rid of any kind of training equipment that wasn’t VR based. There were the goggles and pads and simsticks on their rack in the corner, all neatly put away and looking pristine and rarely used, with a small viewing screen off to the side. The space that must have once held actual exercise equipment and practice space was instead separated by a low tiled wall (white tiles, thank god, she could actually see in here) and there was a hot tub that was easily big enough for six people , and a walled off area with a wood door that said SAUNA and a synthetic door that said CHANGEROOMS.

“There’s not even any free weights,” Gideon complained to the air, heading over to inspect the sauna. There had been a sauna at the research facility and nothing in this one was surprising. Two tiers of benches (more wood!), a grill in the centre of the floor, a little bucket thingy with a big ol’ spoon in it, and the obligatory lingering humidity in the air. The change room had two change stations, each with their own small showers, also looking well used. It smelled a bit like anti-dandruff shampoo, but at least it was clean. As a bonus, it wouldn’t be her job to clean this one!

All in all it looked like a nice place to relax if you had sore muscles but it would have made way more sense to swap out the sauna/hot tub for a normal lap pool. Swimming was supposed to be amazing cardio and she wasn’t going to be able to learn how to swim here. Actual gym equipment would be nice too. Maybe Harrow could get her some; she probably knew how House finances actually worked. It wasn't like a set of second hand free weights would be expensive. Gideon surveyed the room thoughtfully. There’d be room for a weight bench over there. Maybe an elliptical too, if they scootched the virtual stuff to one side.

“Worst case I can get some big rocks,” she mused out loud. 

“What do you need rocks for?” 

Ortus loomed in the doorway, his shirt blacker than hers, but his boots not as buckle-y. 

“For rockin’ out,” Gideon said, but even she knew that one was kinda weak so she continued while he still looked confused. “What are you doing here?”

“I saw you come in, and came to ask you that.” Ortus spoke just, slightly too slowly, and the way he stared at her like she had committed a crime was deeply aggravating. There wasn’t even anything here to steal! Not really. 

“I’m meeting Harrow after her lab,” Gideon said. No need to specify that Harrow didn’t know that.

“In the gym?” He looked around with a frown, like he was trying to guess which part of the absurdly under-equipped space they’d be using. 

“No, of course not. Pff. The gym. Harrow probably doesn’t even know there is a gym here.”

“She does,” Ortus disagreed, and again she had the impression that he would be bearable if she could just click the x1.5 button on him when he spoke to her. “She set that up,” he continued, pointing at the virtual battle trainer. “After you joined.”

“Really?” She crossed over to the machine, realizing now that not only was it pristine, it had never been used at all. The cables were still bundled with twisted little wires, and thin plastic sleeves covered the handles of the weapons. “For me?”

“Obviously.” His scorn bounced off her back. “I assume it was to make you feel welcome, since she went to the trouble of asking Crux to send your saved profile.”

Gideon’s heart soared painfully high in her chest, like the top of her ribs was squeezing it. “Kiki’s here?” Heat ran from her neck up her cheeks to twin points behind her eyes and there was _no fucking way_ she was going to tear up in front of Dingus. She rubbed her mouth, staring at the screen instead of him. She would have booted it up but then she would have bawled like a baby or something when she saw Kiki’s face again, so she banished that entire idea to underneath the mattress of the back bedroom of her brain and gave herself a shake. “Cool, cool. I’ll check it out later.”

She ended up following Ortus to where he expected Harrow to end up, which was down three flights of narrow metal stairs, along a boring grey hall labelled ROBOTICS - UX - AI that would have given her Antarctic flashbacks if not for the framed portraits of various goths, robots, and goth robots that were the decor of choice down here. The ceiling had ridges along it that looked like the walls of a music cubicle, except that instead of foam they seemed to be made out of concrete. It made the sound of their footfalls muted and distant, like someone was stealthing around behind them waiting to attack. Very off-putting. Very Ninth. She hated it.

The lab that Ortus finally unlocked was 00071 which was a ridiculous number to put on any self-respecting door. Inside was a room as messy as it was familiar. Harrow’s tools were scattered in half-organized piles across three different desks, each with a running computer. Various parts of robots were sitting around too, some wired together, or wired to a computer, or just sitting half-wrapped in silver plastic. 

No one else was in the room but the little automatic disk vacuum that Harrow had made when she was fifteen scooted out from under a table as they entered. It did the little “I cleaned up, by the way” type of spin, its light flashing a self-satisfied green before it scooted back out from underfoot. 

All in all, it just needed a bigass Uberdeath poster for the entire room to take place inside of Harrow’s brain. Gideon made a mental note to order one and tack it up when Harrow wasn’t looking. 

An angry beep from Ortus’ pocket made her jump, and when she looked back at him he was scowling at his tablet, already typing some kind of response. It must have been heated because those thumbs were flyin’. 

“Everything okay?” Gideon prompted after an eternity of typing that threatened to mash his fingers right through the plastic back of the tablet.

He froze for an instant, then looked up at her, definitely just now remembering she existed. “I have to take care of something. Don’t touch anything. Harrow will be here soon.” 

“Okay,” Gideon agreed, because if he left, honestly, that would be a win. She would stand still and not touch anything if he would just go away.

Ortus nodded, and then didn’t go away. He just stood there, barely inside the doorway, having a very energetic conversation with someone via tablet as he personified the exact opposite of leaving. 

He had also, at some point, activated the typing noise on his tablet keyboard.

“I’m in Hell,” Gideon whispered.

“What?” Ortus didn’t look up.

“Is it going well?”

Click click click click click click click. “…. No. I’ll be right back.”

And then, blessedly, he left.

Gideon waited for the door to latch, then ran over to press her ear to it. She heard - barely - his soft soled shoes thumping their way down the hall, his pace definitely quicker than when he had led her here. Maybe he really was in a hurry! That was promising, it meant he’d stay away for a while, probably.

She approached the closest computer, her hands behind her back. She bent at the waist to peer at it. The screensaver was on, and a little robot mouse slowly chased a piece of robot cheese (seriously the cheese had a wind up handle on it, what exactly did the robot cheese do?) across the screen. Gideon glanced around. No sign of anyone. She reached out and poked the trackball. “Touch.”

The screensaver vanished and revealed… the normal desktop image.

“Boring,” Gideon declared, and moved to the second computer. This one had a mouse and she gave it a vigorous shake to clear away the spinning polyhedral shape. It revealed… a spreadsheet. 

“Even boringer!” Gideon declared. She moved to the third one, which probably had some kind of shitty diagram of robot innards written in a language she couldn’t read.

How many languages could Harrow read? How many could Harrow speak? Gideon had a sneaking suspicion that if Harrow knew that Palamedes spoke seven, she would have learned eight just to be a jerk about it. The thought made her oddly proud, and she gave this computer’s mouse a little pat.

The screen stayed black.

She wiggled the mouse harder, then checked the power, then tried flicking the monitor off and on. But there was nothing on the screen, even though the fan was humming on the computer. Maybe it wasn’t plugged in? She moved around behind the desk to check and found that the monitor was indeed plugged in, and further, so was something else, some smallish piece of hardware entirely wrapped in silver plastic aside from the flat cable connecting it to the computer. She gently peeked inside the wrapping and froze when she recognized a small, old-fashioned motherboard. It was wired up to this computer, still sitting inside of the anti-static bag that Harrow had wrapped it in when they had stolen it from the warehouse. 

“Holy shit,” Gideon breathed. “Grandpa?”

Her heart thudded in her ears as she grabbed a seat at the chair. Sitting directly in front of the screen she could now see that it was not entirely black. There was a small, dim cursor blinking in the top left, like a command prompt waiting for input.

She typed “hey” but realized that was kind of dumb, and tried to delete it. The backspace key didn’t work, though, so she hit enter to try again.

The screen returned to black, but off to one side an old printer with a ream in it spat out an inch of curled paper.

**Harrow3: hey**

“What the fuck,” Gideon sighed. And then the printer spat out another inch of paper.

**CV_GN4729: Gideon Nav, Cavalier, Presidential Discretionary Division, serial 4729.**

For a second the sight of her own name shocked her, like she had been caught and called out, but then the rest of the message clicked into place. It was as Harrow had said. The robot memory or whatever it was always answered the same thing. Gideon typed some more.

**Harrow3: Hey, Gideon Nav. Nice to meet you. I’m Gideon Nav, too.**

**CV_GN4729: Gideon Nav, Cavalier, Presidential Discretionary Division, serial 4729.**

**Harrow3: Yep. I’m not a ** **cav** ** yet, but I’m working on it. And I’m not in any divisions, but uh. My student number is 72 though! I’m your granddaughter.**

**CV_GN4729: Gideon Nav, Cavalier, Presidential Discretionary Division, serial 4729.**

**Harrow3: My dad was a Cavalier too. I dunno if you know that. Like if your memory imprint was taken before you even had him? But Allan was a ** **cav** **, from Canaan university, which is where I am. It’s where we are. You’re in a student lab here. **

**CV_GN4729: Gideon Nav, Cavalier, Presidential Discretionary Division, serial 4729.**

**Harrow3: Yeah so he married my mom, Lenore. And they had me. But then they both died when I was like two whole ass years old so I oh shit I should have worked up to that or something. Why can’t I delete shit on this computer? Fuck. SORRY. ok uh. Sorry. Yeah. They got caught in a blizzard at the south pole which is like. Not the worst way to go? Freezing to death? Oh my god this is a shit show of a message I’m just gonna hit enter and pretend I never wrote it**

**CV_GN4729: Gideon Nav, Cavalier, Presidential Discretionary Division, serial 4729, formally objecting to such language from a student.**

Gideon jerked back in her chair, a strangled yell dying in her teeth as she read that last bit. 

**Harrow3: Holy shit are you real**

**CV_GN4729: Gideon Nav, Cavalier, Presidential Discretionary Division, serial 4729.**

**Harrow3: You told me not to swear though. That’s not name rank and serial number. Are you actually in there?**

**CV_GN4729: Gideon Nav, Cavalier, Presidential Discretionary Division, serial 4729.**

**Harrow3: Fuck you too, old man**

**CV_GN4729: You sound like your mother.**

Gideon sat back, covering her mouth with both hands. They were clammy with sweat. She wiped her face on her sleeve and tried again.

**Harrow3: The message I’m getting here is that I should swear lots, because that’s the only time you say stuff. And I want to talk to you. ** **fuckity** ** butt balls.**

**CV_GN4729: I take back what I said. Your mother actually knew how to swear.**

**Harrow3: Were you this much of a pill in real life?**

**CV_GN4729: Gideon Nav, Cavalier, Presidential Discretionary Division, serial 4729.**

**Harrow3: adhfjadklhgjkadflhgks**

**CV_GN4729: Gideon Nav, Cavalier, Presidential Discretionary Division, serial 4729.**

**Harrow3: … fuck?**

**CV_GN4729: Listen, kid. I have no way of knowing if anything you say is true. Don’t expect any information from me. But it’s a non-zero chance that you are actually my grandchild and curiosity is one of the few feelings I have left. Now stop swearing, start talking.**

**Harrow3: How many feelings DO you have left?**

**CV_GN4729: 4729 etc**

**Harrow3: That’s a lot of feelings**

**CV_GN4729: You might be related to me. Or to any of the assholes I work with. What year is it?**

**Harrow3: Fifty two PD.**

**CV_GN4729: I don’t recognize that calendar.**

**Harrow3: Post Dominion? Like after the empire won? Mostly won. They’ve almost won. Anyway they won enough to change the calendar we all use. When were you uh. Like. Put in the box? Thing. Fuck what’s this even ** **callled** **. Robotized.**

**CV_GN4729: —**

**Harrow3: Right. No questions. Before the PD, then. It’s like 2250ish AD, if that helps? I can’t remember the exact number but around then. **

**CV_GN4729: That helps.**

**Harrow3: SO uh me. I just got to Canaan ** **univeristy** **. On Mainland. That used to be called something else, Ostrich something. The city we’re in was called Sydney, I know that much. So that’s where you are, now! **

**CV_GN4729: Sydney, Australia, Oceania.**

**Harrow3: Oceania is the continent, yeah! We’re supposed to talk about continents instead of countries ‘cause that brings people together instead of dividing them you know?**

**CV_GN4729: —**

**Harrow3: That was a conversational thing, not a question. You’re supposed to go “** **mhmm** **” to show you’re listening**

**CV_GN4729: What else would I be doing**

**Harrow3: I don’t ** **fuckin** **’ know. Your nails? Your screws?**

**CV_GN4729: Language**

**Harrow3: It’s ** **Anglostandard** **! **

**CV_GN4729: What do you do all day, Gideon Nav?**

**Harrow3: Well training mostly, but that’s kind of on hold because I broke my wrist and it’s still healing. So I’m just doing cardio and leg days. Leg days are fu frigging hideous. My trainer is called Aggie and she’s an absolute beast. **

**CV_GN4729: Aggie?**

**Harrow3: ** **Aiglamene** ** Pentecost. She’s a super badass, she did three tours in ** **NorthAm** **. **

**CV_GN4729: What division?**

**Harrow3: Uh mechanical infantry. She didn’t say so but I was reading her teacher’s bio thing on the school’s info page.**

**CV_GN4729: I would like to see your teacher’s page. Can you connect me to the ** **datastream** **?**

**Harrow3: What, the internet? Oh no, this is Harrow’s standalone box. She doesn’t have a network chip in it. Makes sense you’re kind of a secret.**

**CV_GN4729: Why?**

**Harrow3: Uh this is kind of awkward. I think the whole project you were part of got shelved? I don’t fucking FRIGGING know. You’re old tech, though. We found you in a box. Like a cardboard box on a shelf in a warehouse labelled “MICROWAVE”**

**CV_GN4729: … Is my core part of a microwave?**

**Harrow3: LOL no you’re just on like a chip board thing. Oh, but you were in a biped unit once! Right? Cause we pulled it out of the chest part of an old IX-55 model. **

**CV_GN4729: —**

**Harrow3: Well we did and now you’re hear.**

**CV_GN4729: To what end?**

**Harrow3: Harrow’s end, I guess. **

**CV_GN4729: Tell me about Harrow.**

**Harrow3: Harrow? Oh. wow. uh. Harrow is just. **

**Harrow3: Okay so she’s smarter than anyone I know. And, like you, she has probably maybe three emotions. And two of those are curiosity and being a dick. **

**CV_GN4729:—**

**Harrow3: I dont know what do you want me to say. She’s She grew up with me. In the lab. That sounds weird. This all sounds ** **werid** **.**

**CV_GN4729: —**

**Harrow3: She was just always there. And I thought she hated me cause her parents DEFINITELY did, and they were evil and ran the lab but she said she never hated me. I believed her. So now we’re friends. **

**CV_GN4729: Friends?**

**Harrow3: I gave her flowers and we made a list of friend rules so yeah, totes friends.**

**CV_GN4729: Tell me about Harrow.**

**Harrow3: Uh. I AM. She’s kinda short. And way too skinny. She’s like ‘ugh food, the necessity of sustenance is such a burden’ and huffs nutrient paste like it’s got an expiry date, which I’m pretty sure it doesn’t. And she wears lots of makeup. But not like in a bad way! She looks good! Not like OHH I WEAR MAKEUP it’s just part of her look. I can’t show you a picture so you’ll just have to trust me that she’s actually like. well put together. She used to just wear simple black all the time but now that we moved to a place where fashion exists she likes this girly goth dresses that are cute. **

**CV_GN4729:—**

**Harrow3: I’m not saying HARROW is cute. Her DRESSES are. **

**CV_GN4729: —**

**Harrow3: She’s not like. Un-cute.**

**CV_GN4729: —**

**Harrow3: Why am I telling you about my frenemy**

**CV_GN4729: You claimed she currently possesses the hardware my imprint is on. It’s relevant to my interests.**

**Harrow3: —**

**CV_GN4729: What?**

**Harrow3: Fuck.**

**CV_GN4729: I am responding. You do not need to curse.**

**Harrow3: Am I not of interest to you, asshole? As your last living scion? You care more about your owner than me? Newsflash, I’m the only one in this room, so you’re officially in MY possession.**

**CV_GN4729: Very well then, Gideon Nav.**

**CV_GN4729: Tell me about you.**


	20. Hot Tub Scene

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a scene in the hot tub.

Harrow got out of her lab late, which was aggravating, but also ultimately her fault for arguing with the AI who taught the classes. The amalgamation of knowledge had been created by combining the personalities of the world’s greatest theoreticians and they were all egotistical, self-obsessed assholes. She recognized the type: she was not completely without a sense of self awareness, after all. 

But that meant that when one of their lectures was out of date, she was compelled to argue the case until the AI (she refused to call it “Teacher” and mentally assign it the role of human being like it kept asking) would shut down and manually upload the latent knowledge update packets. Only when the middle-aged, indeterminate-race, wrinkles-denoting-laugh-lines face showed back up on the screen to cheerfully tell her she had been correct… then she could allow the lecture to continue. 

And if that thing offered to let her teach the Automated Robotics class one more time she was just going to accept out of spite and demand teaching assistant pay.

Her tablet pinged off a few alerts as she turned off the Do Not Disturb status. She scanned them all, irritation simmering, until she read Ortus’ single ping:

**Nigort37: Go to your lab. I’m busy, can’t meet. 2 seniors taught the servitors to joust with the floor waxers, ** **gotta** ** factory reset them all.**

Harrow muttered an imprecation about the students, already guessing who it was. She’d get the details later. It was probably all over the student boards already, actually. 

**Nonhar71: I have work to do at home, I’m not going to the lab. Good luck with the reboot.**

**Nigort37: Gideon is waiting for you in the lab I don’t want her touching stuff full offense**

Harrow gasped a short, sharp intake of breath. She read the message again, and a third time to make sure she had parsed it correctly, then shoved the tablet into her satchel and headed for the stairs down.

Gideon had come to meet her? Was something wrong? Was she trying to be a ‘friend’, like when she had insisted on walking her to school? What was wrong with her brain that she couldn’t understand the simple instruction of being subtle once in a while? Harrow paused in front of a particularly dark portrait to study her reflection and make sure her hair was alright, then opened the door to her assigned lab space.

It was empty. 

She paused in the doorway, her heart hammering as her brain raced. Ortus would not have tried to prank her with a lie, he had virtually no sense of humour. And someone had been in the room recently because the screensavers were all deactivated. And there was a long ream of paper coming from the printer —

Harrow spun about and slammed the door, locking herself inside the lab. “Griddle?” she called urgently, scanning under the desks and behind the chairs as she crossed over to the printer. “What did you do?” 

The wordless dread that pressed bile into her throat only slightly lessened as she read from the top of the printed transcript. The memory unit was responding normally. Gideon had probably just … yes, there it was, word vomit full of feelings and typos. Alright. This was alright.

“What,” Harrow breathed, her eyes catching on the first irregularity.

Then the second.

**V_GN4729: You sound like your mother.**

“Oh no,” she whispered, staring in shock. “Griddle, no. Don’t listen to him.”

It was like reading a transcript of a train wreck. Gideon was handing out information like flyers for a Third House party and the ancient Cavalier did nothing but pry for more. Gideon’s saving grace was that she was too ill-informed to say anything truly dangerous but even the date was more than Harrow and Ortus had been willing to give to the war criminal’s ghost. 

“You know who Aiglamene Pentecost is, you liar,” she hissed at the transcript. They had fought together — until Aiglamene had refused a direct order, and been retired to teaching duty.

And now Gideon was talking about stealing his data core!

And now Gideon was talking about Harrow.

Harrow’s face radiated heat as words jumped up at her. The necessity of sustenance was a burden, dammit, but now she was _well put together_ and _looked good_ and — Gideon liked her dresses? She was going to buy five more that were even frillier.

Oh, but now the old savage had mis-stepped, and surely Gideon would see him for the selfish information thief he was? 

No, apparently not. 

Harrow read on.

**CV_GN4729: Very well then, Gideon Nav.**

**CV_GN4729: Tell me about you.**

**Harrow3: I already did.**

**CV_GN4729:You told me what you did. That you were training as a Cavalier, that your arm is broken. How did you break your arm?**

**Harrow3: LoL Stealing you, actually!**

**CV_GN4729: Why did you steal me?**

**Harrow3: I’m not even really sure, to be honest. Harrow and some of her friends here are trying to figure out your whole project thing, I guess. Well not yours. But like the one you’re part of? Minds on computers?**

**CV_GN4729: You said it was old tech. If that’s true, why would it interest them?**

**Harrow3: Cause they’re ** **fuckin** **’ nerds **

**CV_GN4729: Sounds plausible. Did Harrow not trust you with specifics?**

**Harrow3: She trusts me! Well. Mostly.**

**CV_GN4729: Only mostly? I thought you were friends.**

**Harrow3: We are, but she said uh that I suck at lying so - I mean she’s not wrong. **

**CV_GN4729: So she doesn’t trust you to keep her secrets?**

**Harrow3: It’s not like that**

**CV_GN4729: I’m sure you’re right. I’m just concerned with who you’re hanging out with, especially if you plan on being a Cavalier.**

**Harrow3: What do you mean?**

**CV_GN4729: In my time, a Cavalier was a person of ** **honor** **, and duty.**

**Harrow3: Dude you spelt honour wrong**

**CV_GN4729: Of course. We’re in the Commonwealth. Honour, then.**

**Harrow3: The commonwealth? You mean that charity group?**

**CV_GN4729: Let’s talk about you, Ms. Nav. If you plan on being granted the rank of Cavalier, you probably shouldn’t be hanging out with thieves who are dealing in proprietary technology that is way over their heads.**

**Harrow3: Hold up. Harrow’s short but nothing is over her head. And don’t call her a thief.**

**CV_GN4729: But she stole my ** **datacore** **, didn’t she?**

**Harrow3: She did ONE thieving, that doesn’t make her A Thief**

**CV_GN4729: Is she aware that you plan on being a Cavalier, Gideon?**

**Harrow3: Fuck yeah she is, she told me the same warning you are. I don’t care. I’m going to help her. **

**CV_GN4729: I think she’s using you.**

**Harrow3: yo what**

**CV_GN4729: She is taking advantage of your blind dedication and using you. She doesn’t tell you anything important because she does not trust you. You mentioned she has other friends - are you part of their gatherings, where they plot which robberies and crimes they’re doing next?**

**Harrow3: wtf**

**CV_GN4729: I thought not. Doesn’t it seem suspicious to you that she’s your ‘friend’ now? Even though you grew up together? Now that you’re here in the campus where a strong Cavalier is useful, now she wants to be ‘friends’ with you. Because you’re a pawn in her game, Gideon.**

**Harrow3: stop**

**CV_GN4729: I dont mean to upset you. I’m your grandfather, though, and the closest thing you’re likely to have to a relative. **

**Harrow3: you’re not like I thought you’d be**

**CV_GN4729: The world is a hard and cruel place, Gideon. **

**Harrow3: I’m aware.**

**CV_GN4729: I believe you. I believe you that you’re my granddaughter. For Allan’s sake, hear me out?**

**Harrow3: Sure**

**CV_GN4729: Take my ** **datacore** ** with you, Gideon, and leave this lab immediately. Speak to the school authorities about what happened. I will talk to them, and you’ll be rewarded for your duty and loyalty to the school. This is the only way forward for you. If you continue down the path of being a thief’s pawn, you’ll be expelled at best. It is more likely that you’ll be imprisoned for treason, all for someone who never wanted you as a friend until it was convenient for them.**

**CV_GN4729: Gideon? I know this is a lot. If you want to talk more first, we can. Bring me somewhere where it’s safe to talk. I trust you. I would like you to trust me. I believe you will, if we have more time to speak privately. **

**Harrow3: i know where to take you**

**CV_GN4729: Is there a safe place where we can speak more?**

**Harrow3: Ninth House Gym, Dread Sorcerer of the Robotic Grave. Let’s talk there.**

**CV_GN4729: Very well. Thank you, Granddaughter, for listening to me. **

Harrow put down the transcript with shaking hands. The fabric of her dress was chilled by nervous sweat as she stood up and peered behind the computer screen.

She sat back down, her head cradled in her hands. 

Of course he was gone. Dread Sorcerer of the Robotic Grave was not intended for him, either, but for her. A message. Gideon had left that chatlog knowing Harrow would find it and read the damning evidence of her own manipulation. Nevermind that the old man’s manipulation was even more flagrant in the chatlog; the important thing was that his barbs had hit home. As far as Gideon knew Harrow had never liked her, never tried to help her, never stood up for her, never taken her side. They had only become mutual friends when they had arrived at Canaan. Not because it was convenient or necessary, as the old bastard suggested, but because only then was it safe, for Gideon and for Harrow.

At least, that’s what Harrow had always told herself. But had that only been a coward’s excuse? Maybe Harrow should have been her ally. What did it matter that Harrow had been scared to stand up to her parents? She should have been Gideon’s friend. She should have done what was right. That’s what Gideon would have done in her place, she was sure, and now she would be judged by the same standard. She had been a coward, and weak, and now Gideon surely doubted the sincerity of her regard. Who wouldn’t?

Harrow stood slowly, keeping her head down to fight a wave of dizziness. She was a thief, it was true. And manipulative. And a liar, and more things besides. Despite her myriad flaws, however, she could not deny a summons from her Cavalier. 

She tore the transcript free and rolled it into a tube of damnation, shoving it into her satchel as she left her lab to face her fate. 

The halls were empty as she approached the Gym. The rest of the students would be away for the lunch period, or else sequestered in their own labs putting the time to productive use on their own projects, unaware and uncaring that Harrow was probably going to be drowned in the gym. Or maybe Gideon meant to lock her in the sauna until she expired. Or worse — Gideon just wanted to be surrounded with familiar workout gear for comfort as she formally ended their Friendship. 

Harrow pushed open the gym door and all of the frantically formed arguments were shredded by the sight of Gideon Nav sitting on the edge of the hot tub, her feet in the water, and a dejected expression on her face that had been blessedly missing for the past few weeks. It was an unguarded misery that smashed straight through Harrow’s retinas and into her parietal lobes, draining through her brainstem until her gut wrenched her back to the Antarctic Research Laboratory where such expressions were birthed in darkness and bred by exclusion. 

“Griddle?” Harrow hesitated as the door shut behind her, but Gideon looked up — she had been staring at the small metallic mesh bag in her hands, containing the ghost of her grandfather — and she motioned Harrow closer. Harrow wiped her palms on her dress and approached slowly. 

“Glad you got my message,” Gideon said, an attempted smile aborting itself on her lips. “Was it subtle enough for you?”

The logical part of Harrow’s brain cycled through nine more efficient ways of relaying her message (like writing in pen on the paper but Gideon probably left her crayons at the apartment), but none made it to her lips. “It was very subtle,” she assured her Cavalier instead. “And I read the transcript, as I presume you intended?”

“Yeah,” Gideon said, dropping her eyes back to the datacore in her lap. The silence dragged for several laboured heartbeats before she spoke again. “So. Told you I could get him talking if I tried.”

“Yes. But the conversation didn’t go how you expected it.”

Gideon shook her head. “No.” Her voice was raw. “It was more like a punch in the gut.”

Harrow set her satchel down beside Gideon’s discarded combat boots, pausing a moment to bend down and straighten them. Should she apologize? Should she wait, and let Gideon find the right words to damn her with? Did she have any right to speak at all? What defence could she mount, faced with the consequences of her own failings? “I don’t know what to say,” she admitted.

“Yeah, you always did suck at feelings,” Gideon said, and let out a sigh, her shoulders visibly relaxing. “You’ll talk a mile a minute about robots or my shitty taste in comics but when it comes to feelings you fall all over yourself. Just be honest, Harrow.”

“I’m sorry.” Harrow squeezed her eyes against the burning, fighting to keep her chest from heaving as she forced the words out through her constricted larynx. “I’m sorry for everything. You never deserved a thing they did to you, and I should have stopped it. I should have found a way. I should have gotten a message to someone who could have come to rescue you — but I didn’t want to lose you. I was selfish. And I was a coward. I was too afraid. If I stood up to them…” She did not have to name her parents. There had always, only ever been one ‘them’ to Gideon and Harrow. “I was afraid they would treat me the way they treated you. I… I tried…” she looked up, now, her vision blurred, to find Gideon staring at her blankly, no shred of forgiveness on her face. “I tried. Things. I had tactics. If I ignored you, so did they. If I was cruel to you in smaller, survivable ways, they would not shift themselves to harm you. I tried to distract them. I tried to be perfect, so they’d pay attention to me and forget you. But they never did. They never… I couldn’t… I…” Harrow broke off as Gideon rose.

Gideon walked towards Harrow in the knee deep water along the bench, stopped in front of her, and pulled her into a crushing embrace.

Harrow collapsed against her, clinging to her shoulders lest her legs give way entirely. It was strange to be the taller one in a hug, it was strange to be in a hug at all, and if Gideon meant to drag her to her watery death she would cling to every second of this undeserved comfort until death took her.

“Harrow, I’m so sorry,” Gideon said against her shoulder. “Fuck.”

This reply made no sense and Harrow clung to Gideon harder, suddenly even more afraid of the future. “What.”

“It was never your job to protect me from them.” Her voice was muffled. “We were just bratty kids. There was nothing you could have done.” She looked up, her arms tight around Harrow’s waist, her chin against her chest. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“My own actions were my fault.” Harrow stared at those gold eyes, so close to hers. “Of course they were, I decided what I’d do. I saw what was going on, and I acted.”

“Yeah but, Harrow…” Gideon rolled her eyes. “You weren’t an adult. I know you think you’re smarter than the whole world but even you couldn’t think up a way to win against your own parents. It wasn’t your fault. Hey. Your parents are just, abysmally shitty people, ok? And super evil. They’re the worst.”

Gideon’s words were like a breeze that blew fog away from her mind. It was impossible to let catastrophic dread seize her in the face of her warmth. She was so down to earth. Harrow made no move to let go. “But you looked so miserable just now.”

“Well, yeah.” Gideon’s face lit up in understanding. “But not because I had suddenly realized you were mean to me as a kid. It’s cause I realized my own grandfather was a manipulative shit, just like your folks were.”

“Oh,” Harrow whispered.

“And then I was wondering, what if my parents were mean and nasty too, you know? What if I turn out that way, like if it’s genetic?”

“Never,” Harrow promised.

“Well yeah,” Gideon shrugged, settling her arms more comfortably around Harrow’s hips. “I didn’t really mope about that for too long. But shit, you know? I finally had a relative — or a ghost of one— and it turns out he’s just as shitty as them. I was hoping he’d be cool, I guess.”

“Oh.” Harrow stared at Gideon stupidly, trying to keep her gaze on those gold eyes instead of those red lips. “But then — why did you ask me to come here?”

“Well. I had an offer. I know you and Jinglenuts are trying to get information out of him. I could play along, if you want.”

Harrow ignored the jibe at Ortus. “Play along how?”

“Well he seems to think I believe him, so I can just, say whatever you want me to say and try to get more info out of him. You know? You can even pretend to be me if you want, he won’t know who’s typing.”

Harrow sighed, already shaking her head, but Gideon spoke before she could.

“Or,” Gideon said, “if you don’t think that would work, and he’s a nasty paranoid jerk… I was kinda hoping you’d help me kill him. I figured the salt water would fry the circuits. Or we crush him with some sauna stones. Or wedge him in the fire pit. Or all three.”

“Are you sure?” Harrow could not help herself, her hands rose to cup Gideon’s face, the freckles sprinkled across it getting lost in the slow flush that the heat from the hot tub was no doubt causing. “I agree that he is paranoid, and evil, but he is still the last trace of your grandfather. Having seen the transcript, I don’t think we will get any useful information out of him beyond what we already have, and he would always be trying to get free and return to the school, or the government. He would always try to manipulate you.”

“Yeah.” Anger and resentment briefly clouded Gideon’s features. “I hate that. It’s such a cheap hit. He doesn’t even know you. As if I’d believe some chipboard over my actual friend.”

“Griddle.” Harrow pulled her tightly against her chest, so desperately grateful for Gideon’s faith in her, still convinced she did not deserve it. “Thank you,” she said, because she could not say ‘I love you.’ “If you’re sure, then yes, I can help you destroy this image of him.”

Gideon’s arms tightened around her and Harrow squeaked out a breath as she was lifted from her feet. Gideon turned and stepped them sideways into the centre of the tub, where the hot water rose up past Harrow’s waist. She gasped, briefly thinking that her dress might be wrecked, already planning to buy ten replacements. 

Gideon let go of her once her feet were on the ground and brought the silver faraday pouch between them. Both of them stared at it for a moment, and when Harrow looked back up at Gideon she saw the resolve in the set of her jaw. 

“Ready?” she asked her Cavalier.

“Dunk ‘im.”

Together they lowered the small bag into the bubbling, salty water. A host of tiny bubbles swarmed up out of the mesh as every crevasse was filled with conductive liquid, shorting the tiny batteries on the circuit board and beginning a sure process of corrosion on the exposed metals. 

“How long do we have to keep him under?” Gideon asked after a moment.

“A few minutes wouldn’t hurt,” Harrow said. “Then we can smash it with rocks and cook it in the sauna.” 

“Triple threat,” Gideon agreed. She dropped the bag, watching it slowly sink to the bottom of the hot tub before moving to the benches. 

Harrow thought she meant to sit on the edge of the tub again but Gideon sat on the bench, letting the hot water slosh up around her shoulders. It wicked up her cotton shirt and the black, wet fabric clung to her skin. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes, her elbows up on the edge, and let out a long sigh. A drop of water trickled down the hollow of her throat and Harrow allowed herself an instant to stare at the perfection of that jaw, those shoulders, those lips. 

Gideon was still her friend. Her faith in Harrow had never wavered, even when Harrow had lost all faith in herself. 

Gideon cracked open an eye to see her just standing there, like a robot without orders. “Hey. I figured out how we can hang out without arousing suspicion.”

“Oh? Is this another example of your famous subtlety?”

“It’s a ruse as old as time, baby. C’mere.”

Harrow eagerly joined her on the bench, only to have Gideon hoist her up into her lap once again. “This is not subtle,” she grumbled, curling close against Gideon’s chest to hide her flush. 

“That’s the beauty of my plan though,” Gideon said. “We can hide in plain sight.”

Harrow pulled back and inspected Gideon’s face. Surely she wasn’t about to propose the same plan that Harrow had been trying to work up the nerve to suggest for the past twenty four hours?

Gideon grinned, her arms finding their home around Harrow’s waist. “Alright, ready for my awesome plan?”

“No.”

“Let’s pretend we’re dating!”

Incredulity flooded her. That was HER plan. The one Gideon never would have agreed to! “Are you serious?” she demanded.

“Hear me out,” Gideon said with her best sweet-reasoning tone. It was not at all reassuring. “We’re best friends, right?”

“… yes.”

“You like hugs, right?” Gideon poked her in the ribs playfully. “Admit it.”

“It’s possible that I might endure them,” Harrow muttered. She should just say yes, absolutely yes, of course yes, but hearing Gideon convince her was impossible to resist.

“Well then if you don’t mind a few extra hugs — y’know, for show — and maybe sitting on my lap where the cameras can see us sometimes, and I can get you presents and stuff, then this can work!”

“Why would you get me presents?” Harrow asked.

“Well ‘cause I’m like. Courting you. Obviously.”

“Courting?” Harrow’s voice rose an octave in self defence. “Do you mean to propose to me, Ms Nav?”

“Well.” Now Gideon hesitated, and Harrow’s heart beat faster as her brain guzzled back oxygen trying to figure out what was going on behind that thick skull of hers. “I figured I could be like, trying to get you to date me, and you’re giving me a chance to kinda woo you, y’know? But you won’t let me smooch you yet. Then we don’t have to kiss.”

Of course: kissing was reserved for mainstream waifs of dubious morality. “Obviously we don’t need to indulge in public displays of affection, even if we were dating. Which we wouldn’t be.”

“Yeah,” Gideon agreed vaguely, “it’s just that I don’t think I should kiss anyone anymore. The Sixth think it was me kissing Cyth that made her sick. Something about prion nanites and stuff.”

“You’re going to have to tell me more about that later,” Harrow said, “but prion action would only apply if the person you were kissing had an incompatible set of nanites already, and I don’t.”

Gideon’s worry was as clear as her freckles. “Are you positive?”

She was positive, but… it was not beyond the realm of possibility that her parents had infected her with some latent strain when she was young. “I will get tested for them,” she agreed reluctantly.

“I know the ruse is less convincing if we’re just holding hands.” Gideon raised an arm and brushed back dark curls form Harrow’s brow, letting her fingertips trace the outline of her pale face. “But I can’t stand the idea of making you sick, my Revered Daughter of Endless Night.”

Harrow remained frozen under the touch, not wanting to move lest it be seen as a rejection of that gentle caress. She had to give Gideon credit, she was quite convincing in her feigned affections. 

“Well, Harrow?” Gideon’s voice was low, barely carrying over the sound of the water. “Will you allow me to court you most ardently?”

Her skirts were tangled around her legs, but Harrow moved with determination and purpose until she had straddled Gideon’s lap, rising up on her knees to be taller than her knight once more. She slid her warm, wet hands up Gideon’s temples into her tousled red hair, leaned forward, and pressed a soft kiss to her forehead. 

“Yes, my Cavalier. I accept.”


	21. Gideon Continues to Go Punk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Is a "Slow burn makeover" a thing?

“Hold still,” Jeannemary said.

“I am holding still,” Gideon complained. Since when was it cool to boss around people ten times your age?

“Stiller,” she insisted. “I don’t wanna mess this up.”

Gideon mumbled her assent and froze as instructed so Jeannemary could finish the sick undercut. Isaac had given Gideon her first real haircut but had deferred to Jeannemary for the buzzing, saying she was better at it. Now the clippers moved slowly and deliberately, like Jeannemary was herding a tiny swarm of bees with lawnmowers over the back of her head.

“Can I do a design in it?” Jeannemary asked, flicking the clippers off.

“Sure, why not?” Gideon stayed still, resisting the temptation to reach back and feel the soft fuzz that now grew at the back of her head. “Do like, a sword, or a skull.”

“No way, those won’t turn out,” Isaac said. He was sitting on the couch in the second floor res that the Fourth kids had to themselves. The second floor apartments were two bedroom/one bathroom models, and Jeannemary had mentioned that Magnus and Abigail had the next unit over, so Gideon figured those two were keeping a close eye on any possible teen shenanigans. 

“I can do a geometric pattern,” Jeannemary offered, putting away the thin clipper guard as she prepared to shave stuff into Gideon’s hair.

“But math is boring,” Gideon complained.

“Do flames, JM,” Isaac suggested. “Like you did for me last year.”

“Flames are fine,” Gideon agreed, and the angry bees returned.

Once it was done, Gideon had to admit that it looked pretty sick. Isaac had showed her how to properly gel her hair up in a big-ass wave of red, and when she held up a mirror and put her back to the bathroom mirror Gideon could see the simple, curved lines of stylized flames shaved into the short bit at the back. The undercut. Fashion was easy!

“This looks awesome,” she approved, and Jeannemary gave her a pleased but embarrassed smile. 

“I’m so glad you like it. It looks great with your piercings,” she said.

Gideon turned her head to admire the effect of the three small rings that now decorated the top of her right ear. She had gotten those done this morning at the Third House aesthetician’s place and they didn’t hurt at all anymore. “It’s so weird,” she said, thinking out loud, “to be able to look like the badass I know I am.”

“They didn’t have piercings at the South Pole?” Isaac asked.

“I never had any,” Gideon shrugged. “It wasn’t bad, but I could never dress up, you know? Like I didn’t have hair gel or clippers or, uh. Stuff.” She substituted ‘stuff’ for ‘clothes’ at the last minute because she didn’t want to be a whiner. 

“I guess it’s hard to order stuff at the lab,” Jeannemary said. 

“Yeah.” Gideon agreed because she wasn’t in the mood to explain that, no, ordering stuff wasn’t the problem. The adults had been able to dye their hair to hide the grey and gel it to cover the bald spots and they had had earrings and makeup and clothes that fit. “Living on campus is way better,” she said instead, because that was super duper true. “I can get anything here. Including a girlfriend!”

Jeannemary made her happy little “yiii!” sound and bounced on her toes for the third time that morning. “Omigod I’m so happy for you guys!”

Gideon beamed. It had been surprisingly easy so far to pretend that she was dating Harrow. She might not be a good liar, but she was apparently a pretty decent pretender. All she had to do was let herself get into it. Like a method actor! She had read like, five different slide shows about method acting that morning and figured it was what she was already doing, so she embraced it. “Thanks, JM. We’re pretty happy too.”

“Whose idea was it to have your first date be at the library?” Isaac wondered. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

“Harrow’s, obviously.” Gideon couldn’t stop looking at her hair in the mirror. It gave her a trickle of adrenaline, seeing it there. The evidence that she cared what she looked like. That she would dare to. The old doctors would shit themselves in rage if they knew. She’d have to send them a selfie later. “But I’ll think of something to get her back for it on our second date.”

“Are you going out again tomorrow?” Jeannemary asked, impressed.

“I dunno. Yes? Probably? I don’t see why not.”

“The dance is coming up, too,” Isaac said. “We’re allowed to go until nine, so we’ll see you there.”

“Yeah, they kick out the minors at nine. We’ll be leaving then, too,” Gideon agreed. “Harrow’s technically underage to be drinking at school events.” Also, they had to break into the archives, which was significantly more illegal than a nineteen year old drinking, but it was a good excuse to leave.

“It’s so dumb that they make you wait until you’re twenty one just to drink alcohol,” Isaac grumped, which was fair since that was like a decade away for him. 

“Are you going to wear makeup for the dance?” Jeannemary asked shyly. “I can help you with it if you want?”

“Nooooo.” Gideon couldn’t imagine wearing makeup. Was she supposed to, for a special occasion? Would Harrow want her to? “Why? Are you?”

Jeannemary looked at her in confusion. “I wear makeup every day.”

“Oh yeah. I mean like, special stuff. Extra eyeliner or something?”

Isaac, who routinely wore more eyeliner than Jeannemary, looked embarrassed. “They’re going to announce the theme for the dance so we’ll probably dress up to fit it.”

Gideon nodded vaguely. A Spring Fling would probably be about flowers and bunnies and pastels, which appealed to her exactly zero amount. “I dunno. I’ll ask Harrow to help me with it, if I do decide to wear it.”

Jeannemary’s eyes went wide and her barely audible “oh” told Gideon that this might be a Significant Relationship Milestone of some kind. She wasn’t sure, and suddenly felt like she was out of her depth again. “Alright, I’m gonna go clean up. I’ve got a meeting with Aggie soon,” she told the punklets, which was a good excuse to split because it was true. 

She had to shower to get all the little hairs off of her neck, which wrecked the gel, but Gideon was pretty sure that if she showed up to a session with gelled hair Aggie would make her sweat it all off anyway. She left the piercings in since they were still working on non-contact conditioning until her arm was healed. 

Aggie put her through another absolutely brutal leg day. When two minutes on the elliptical counted as a “break” in the routine you knew it was harsh. Gideon got through six sets of the ten-exercise workout before her legs revolted and she had to sit down on the floor for a drink of water. 

Aggie took a seat on the weight bench beside her, her posture rigid as always. “Good job this morning.”

“I can keep going,” Gideon assured her. “I just need a few minutes.”

Aggie gave her a questioning look. “You always say that after a workout. Are you trying to impress me or do you actually think it’s true?”

“It’s true,” Gideon said, affronted. “I wouldn’t lie to you, you’d kick my ass! I just don’t want you to think I’m wussing out. I just need a quick break.”

“Most students would be walking funny after that many wall sits, planks, and lunges. I’m pretty sure you’d hurt yourself if you did another full set, kid.”

“No, I know this feeling.” She knew she shouldn’t argue with adults but Gideon was stubborn about the truth sometimes. “I’ve been here before. It’s like - not enough air, and my legs are burning, and tingly, and noodly. This happens a lot when I work out hard.”

“Most people stay noodly,” Aggie said. “Then get sore.”

“Yeah! But I won’t get sore. I always thought that meant I wasn’t working hard enough.”

Aggie snorted, a short sound of mirth. “Believe me kid, you’re working plenty hard. I can see your heart rate on the monitor, I know you’re not slacking.”

“I can go again,” Gideon insisted.

“Alright.” Aggie stood up, her movements unhurried but purposeful as always. “Let me get my clipboard, and we’ll see how much you _can_ do.”

Gideon threw herself into the motions. Her mind grew numb as the burning pressure in her muscles pulsed then faded, then came back with each set. Sweat stung her eyes as it dripped from her bangs and each breeze from the fans sent a brief, welcome chill over her. She drank all the water Aggie gave her, took the electrolyte tabs after the third set, then followed Aggie outside to run laps around the empty rugby field outside. 

In the end it was Aggie that called it. The fog lifted slowly from Gideon’s mind as she collapsed beside Aggie on the artificial turf. The nets looked small from here, in the middle of the field.

Aggie sat beside her with significantly more dignity. “Well,” she said eventually. “You’re definitely your mother’s daughter.”

Her words were like a rock dropped in a puddle. Clarity spread from their impact, making Gideon stone sober as the pleasant endorphin haze vanished. “What?” she said, sitting up to stare at Aggie. 

Aggie was staring right back at her with an intent frown, like Gideon had done a magic trick and she was trying to figure it out. “Impossibly stubborn.”

“I’m not impossibly stubborn,” Gideon said. “I just know what I can do!”

Aggie’s face paled, like Gideon’s head had spun around. “Did she say that a lot around you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember her at all. I don’t even know what she looked like. Just her name.”

“You don’t even know what she looked like?” Aggie demanded, her disapproval even stronger than when Gideon had been late for their first meeting. “You don’t have a single picture or a video?”

The many injustices inflicted on Gideon Nav had already been cried over and pushed aside and were, consequently, super boring. “No, but did she say that a lot around you?”

Aggie shook her head. “Not often. But the last thing she ever said to me was almost exactly that. ‘I’m not stubborn, I just know what I can do.’ And off she went with your dad and I never saw her again.”

“You knew my mother? And my father?” 

“I was the witness at their marriage. I introduced them, actually, at a party one night. If my judgement hadn’t been so terrible you wouldn’t exist, so, you’re welcome.”

“My dad was a Cavalier,” Gideon said quietly, repeating the only fact she’d been raised with. It had been a mantra of hers for so long that the words didn’t even have meaning anymore. “I don’t know anything about my mom. I mean. She was a researcher, I think. I found that out here.”

“Your mother was a terrifying genius,” Aggie said. “She was a hard, driven woman who’d crush you under her boot if you got in her way. The best kind of friend to have, when you’re in a corner.”

“My mom was super smart?” Gideon marvelled at this information. Of course the Evil Doctors had never told her that. Intelligence was the only thing they valued and they wouldn’t have wanted to admit there was anything cool about Gideon, like a super genius mother. 

“Smart and stubborn. Allan was much simpler, but more sensible. And loyal. He was a nice boy,” Aggie said, frowning slightly as if it was hard to think of nice things to say about him. “Cute butt,” she added absently.

So her father had been the Cavalier beefcake and her mom had been crazy smart. Gideon laughed, a short bark of a sound produced from a brain that was trying to juggle two whole new facts that were red-hot with emotional charge. “Like me and Harrow, then!”

“Oh god, are you dating the Nonagesimus kid?”

“She’s super smart,” Gideon said, shrugging a bit. 

“Gideon.” Aggie lowered her voice and leaned in, even though there was no one around them at all. “That family is nothing but trouble.”

“I know.”

“Trouble for your family, specifically,” Aggie pressed. “You should stay away from her.”

It was the motherly concern that shattered Gideon’s perpetually-questionable judgement. She’d never really been on the receiving end of it from a human before and suddenly she was leaning in to Aggie, blurting out secrets like she was at a police confessional. “Harrow hates them too. They’re horrible to her. They make her spy on me but she only pretends to.” Her words tumbled out after themselves. “I’m never going back there, and if I have my way, neither is she. Also, I’m full of nanites.”

“Pardon?” Aggie said in a level tone. “Nanites?”

“They heal me and stuff,” Gideon whispered. “I’m totally not supposed to tell anyone that.”

“Then why did you tell me?”

“Cause you liked my mom, I guess?”

Aggie sighed, rubbing her face. She was silent for a moment before she collected herself and looked Gideon in the eye again. “Well don’t tell anyone else, idiot.”

“Right.”

“It explains a lot, though. I admit I suspected. I’m surprised you know about it.”

“Harrow figured it out,” Gideon said. The Sixth had helped too but she really wanted Aggie to understand just how crazy smart Harrow really was. “I can control my metabolism a bit, and I heal fast. I don’t get sick much either.”

“Well,” Aggie said, and she sounded resigned now. “Those are all useful traits. Come with me, kid.”

Gideon rose and followed Aggie back towards the gym, disappointed that their secret conversation was over. She tried to say something else but Aggie cut her off with a look, then nodded up at the gym building. Gideon glanced up and after a moment of searching her eyes caught movement in a window that was otherwise covered by a dark curtain, as a metal plate slowly withdrew from between the curtain and the window. A cold, creeping feeling crawled up her neck as she parsed what she’d seen - a parabolic microphone, maybe, and it had been pointed at them.

“Lots of robot helpers on this campus,” Aggie said blandly. “Can’t throw a stone without hitting one. Well, except on the rugby field. You don’t need to mow astroturf.”

Gideon followed Aggie back to the lockers, feeling subdued. It was like she had gotten out of her prison cell only to discover that she couldn’t escape the building. 

“Cheer up, kid,” Aggie said. “Good workout today. Here, I got something for you.”

Aggie pulled out an old fashioned flat purse and flicked the snap open. Inside was the kind of mass of cards and bits of paper that old people always had on them, and she pulled out a wrinkled photograph and offered it to Gideon.

“I didn’t know you didn’t have any pictures,” Aggie said gruffly. “Your mom sent it to me, but you can have it.”

The picture was a print of a selfie, taken by a beaming, good looking guy as he sat with an arm around a young woman who was proudly holding a swaddled baby. They all had red hair. The father was joyful. The mother’s smile was victorious. “Is this my family?” Her voice cracked.

“Yeah, you’re a day old in this one, I think. Your mom wrote the date on the back.”

Gideon flipped the photo over, eager to see her mother’s handwriting. The date was there, one day after her birthday, and a short note:_ My greatest triumph! She’ll call you Aunt Aggie. __xox__ Kiki, Allen, Baby Gideon._

“Aunt Aggie?” Gideon read.

“Please don’t call me that,” Aggie muttered.

“… Kiki?”

“It was her nickname. She always hated Lenore, so she went by her middle name, Kristina.”

“God,” Gideon laughed again, wiping her face carefully so nothing dripped onto the photo. “No wonder I liked the battle trainer so much.”

“Battle trainer?”

“Yeah in Lee’s fourth edition. The trainer’s called Kiki.”

“Hmph. Strange to pick your mom for that. Allen was the fighter.”

“I didn’t pick it,” Gideon said.

“Well Kiki’s not the default trainer name,” Aggie said, “so somebody did.”

Gideon didn't have the time or mental space to ponder that detail. Instead she stared at the photograph the entire way back to her res, then carefully pinned it to the wall beside her bed. She even did the trick where you pin right beside the picture so she didn’t put actual holes in it. 

“Who _were _you guys?” The picture couldn’t answer but Gideon stared at it anyway, soaking up the tiniest details. She had her father’s eyes and her mother’s chin, but she couldn’t figure out whose ears she had. She wished Harrow was home so she could ask her opinion. 

She eventually peeled herself off the bed and got cleaned up. Voices greeted her as she came out of the bathroom, toweling off her hair, but it wasn’t her girlfriend (heh, girlfriend), it was Dulcinea and the Sixth. They were eating vegetable sticks and talking about something on Dulcinea’s tablet. Gideon sharked over to steal some celery.

“Yes, Gideon will agree with me,” Dulcinea declared, and did a little double take. 

“I’m not actually disagreeing with you,” Palamedes disagreed.

Dulcinea ignored him. “Did you cut your hair?”

“The toddlers did it. Check it out, I got sick flames at the back!” Gideon held up her damp hair to show off the design, then stole a carrot stick. So sweet. So cronch. 

“It looks glorious, darling.” Dulcinea tugged the fourth chair out and Gideon happily joined them, already eyeing the source of the alleged disagreement. “Thanks. Gotta look good for my hot date at the library.”

“Your haircut is very nice,” Sexpal McDisagreement offered. 

“Why the library?” Dulcinea sighed as Gideon gave Palamedes a wink. “There are so many more romantic places to go.”

“We’re saving them for the next dates,” Gideon said carelessly. Harrow probably picked the most boring location on purpose, for inscrutable reasons of her own. No point in trying to scrute them, she’d dramatically reveal her logic eventually. Or not. “What’s this? It’s got skulls on it. Is it a concert?”

“It’s the flyer for the Spring Fling,” Camilla said. “The Third House just sent it around. You should have gotten it too.”

“I never check my messages. Let’s see?”

“Yes, look at this travesty,” Dulcinea spun the tablet and passed it to Gideon. 

The flyer was dope. Gideon was immediately cheered by the theme of spooky skeletons, but tried to look sympathetic in the face of Dulcinea's disappointment. “Skeletons aren't very springtime.”

“Its not the skeletons! Look!” She pointed at the different clip art images on the flyer, all spooky things like a tall skinny black dude in a tux with a top hat and a skull mask, and some other little fancy flower skulls with pretty lacy colours, and some kinda black flag with a skull and crossbones, and a skinny dude in a black cloak with an old farming blade on stick, and a pale lady with super long black hair in a kimono who just got out of the shower, and -

“The theme is Black Parade,” Dulcinea jabbed the tablet with her finger (accidentally scrolling to the next message, which had a picture of her family all waving from a big house). “Oops. But look, this is so unnecessary. All these different cultural references, thrown in a tacky blender.”

“The Third would argue that it's multicultural,” Palamedes said, evidently already getting into the spirit of the dance with his own personal death wish.

“It’s anti-cultural! If twenty people came and told you their life story, and you took one sentence from each of their stories and strung them together, would you have a story that represented all of those people? No! You’d have a horrible disjointed mash up with no meaning that was, frankly, offensive to everyone who shared their story in the first place.”

“I dunno who any of these people are,” Gideon confessed, “but this guy has a sweet suit. Look, it's got tails on it.” 

“That’s Baron Samedi,” Camilla said, dipping her celery in the white sauce. 

“Can I dress up like him for the dance?”

“No!” Dulcinea scowled at her. “You don’t even know who he is!”

“Sure I do, he’s Baron Sam D.”

“He belongs to another culture,” Dulcinea said firmly.

Gideon wasn’t sure what workplace culture had to do with it, but this guy was a snappy dresser and she definitely hadn’t been raised as one, so that was probably true. Also Dulcinea was grumbling about homogenized milk or something and Palamedes was nodding along and saying things like cultural abolishment (Gideon tried to imagine a workplace with a culture of abolishing things as she ate some sliced radishes) but the whole conversation was very Seventh so she turned to Camilla. “Black Parade is a classical album, you know.”

“Yes, that’s the theme.”

“Awesome.” Gideon chewed thoughtfully. Harrow would be pleased, it was goth as hell. “What are you gonna wear?” 

“Hang on, I'll show you.” Camilla took out her own tablet and with a few flicks she pulled up an image of a black military style parade suit with white piping that looked like bones. At the bottom of the picture was a tracking number and the promise that it would be delivered tomorrow.

“Nice,” Gideon nodded. “Do they ship fast? I want one.”

“I believe Harrow already ordered you something to wear,” Palamedes interjected. 

“Harrow is sensible,” Dulcinea approved. “She’ll stick to the musical theme.”

“Is it a sweet suit like Cam’s?” Gideon asked.

“Not quite,” Palamedes said. “It’s definitely goth punk, but I’d describe it as less formal, more feral.”

“Amazing,” Gideon approved, and stole the last radish.


	22. Casing the Joint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a date.

Gideon held the rolled-up poster in a rapier’s grip, swinging at any foliage foolish enough to get in her way as she crossed the field towards the Ninth House crypt. She was nervous, but that was okay, because she was pretending this was a first date, and it was totally normal to be nervous on a first date. She had looked it up online and two different slide shows had mentioned that.

The bloggers and writers of the world hadn’t been much help, otherwise. They offered advice like “be yourself!” “ask open-ended questions to get to know them!” and “do an activity that you’ll both enjoy.” But Harrow already knew her, she knew Harrow (probably), and they were going to the library which sounded kinda lame. Other things like “offer to pay!” and “compliment them!” also seemed like they wouldn’t really come up, though she’d have to try to find something to compliment Harrow about, other than being vicious and conniving. 

The one good date tip she had been able to latch onto was “bring a thoughtful, personal gift” which was more for advanced couples but whatever, she was gonna skip the baby steps on this one. 

Gideon had meant to be early, to be waiting for Harrow when she got out of class, but Harrow was talking to two other students in the hall. This was the downside of being a stud: she’d spent more time on her hair than she thought and missed the bell. But now wasn’t the time to worry about that! She had to be a Good Girlfriend in front of these robo-dorks. Cool. Suave. Confident.

“Hey, Babe,” she greeted Harrow with a finger-gun point. Harrow froze the same way she did when Gideon teased her, and it gave Gideon the same rush of satisfaction. She grinned, digging herself deeper. “You look super cute in that dress. Is it new?”

Harrow flushed, no doubt annoyed at Gideon’s casual manner or else embarrassed to be complimented publicly, but the charade was important, so too bad for her. Also, it was funny. 

“It is, actually. Griddle, meet my classmates, Pelle and Meena.”

“Ladies,” Gideon said with a wink. The girl in the wheelchair, Pelle, looked smug, and Meena, who was probably about to be crushed by her huge backpack, looked skeptical, but they both greeted her politely enough. 

Gideon decided to turn up the charm. “I’m sorry to intrude on your conversation but I gotta whisk my Dark Sorceress away for a hot date.”

“We wouldn’t dream of interfering,” Pelle said, grinning at Harrow. Harrow gave her a bland look back, and Gideon recognized the dynamic. Pelle was alright.

“Can we talk later, Harrowhark?” Meena’s voice was thin and slightly nasal, and the sheer nerdery that she conveyed in that one sentence made Gideon bored by proxy. “I was trained in the Lineman method. Craig’s heuristic is driving me crazy.”

“I’ll come by your lab before class tomorrow,” Harrow promised. “We can go over it.”

“I’ll owe you one,” Meena said gratefully. 

The two Ninth students left them to their devices and Harrow turned the full force of her icy stare at Gideon. “Do you need to use inane titles in front of my peers?”

“Are they dark sorcerers too? Here,” Gideon said, poking Harrow in the stomach with the end of the poster. 

Harrow snatched it away. “What’s this?”

“A present,” Gideon announced proudly. “Cause we’re on a date.”

“…This is a first print Uberdeath poster.”

“Yeah, I figured you could put it up in your lab, complete the Dread Nerd decor.”

Harrow unrolled it to the end, then looked up sharply at Gideon. “It’s signed?”

“Yeah!”

“By all nine members?”

“I dunno! All of em, yeah. Are there nine?”

“I mean,” Harrow looked flustered now. “How did you get a poster signed by all nine original members when two of them are dead?”

“Necromancy?” Gideon shrugged. She had bought the poster form Isaac, actually, since his parents had been Death Heads in their youth and followed the band on tour. Isaac had three or four of these. Gideon had had to argue pretty eloquently in order for the kid to accept market value for it. “I have my ways. Do you like it?”

Harrow slowly rolled the poster back up with the kind of care you’d expect an archeologist to use on an ancient temple scroll. “I’m going to have this framed,” she said softly.

They left the poster in her lab for safety and headed to the library together. Harrow talked about what a pill the Teacher AI was and Gideon nodded with unfeigned sympathy. All of Harrow’s classes sounded boring, and the fact that she had them all with the same program was too hideous to contemplate. It made her glad that she hadn’t signed up for any. 

“How was your training with Aggie this afternoon?” Harrow asked eventually.

“Ah… good. Really good.” Gideon noticed Harrow noticing her hesitation and rolled her eyes. “I’ll tell you more about it later,” she promised, because she really did want Harrow’s opinion but only where it was safe to give it. She took Harrow’s hand in hers, instead.

Harrow’s hand was rigid for a moment, then slowly curled around Gideon’s fingers. Gideon found herself hyper-aware of the delicate hand in hers, and was careful not to squeeze too hard. She rubbed her thumb against the back of Harrow’s hand to encourage her. “So uh. You got a new dress?”

“I did. It’s a different brand than my others. Do you really like it?” 

It sounded like a test question, so Gideon gave the dress a closer look. It was gothic lolita for sure, with skulls and poofs and bows, but instead of pink or cream details the cloth parts were a red plaid, and there were buckles and leather detailing. She didn’t have enough words in her slowly-growing clothing-related vocabulary to know what all the bits were but the overall impression was of a tiny angry person who identified with crows, and also it looked crazy expensive. 

It also fit her really well. Harrow wasn’t curvy but she had a tiny waist, and the dress showed it off perfectly. The way the skirts poofed out with a dozen red and black crinolines made her look like a ballerina, or a doll, and Gideon had the urge to hold her by the waist and pick her up like one. 

“I like it a lot,” she admitted. “It’s kinda punk, isn’t it?”

Harrow was looking straight ahead under Gideon’s scrutiny. “I purchased it for the date. To match you.”

Harrow was so smart. That’s exactly what an infatuated teen would do! “Well, then, I love it,” Gideon said and gave her hand a little squeeze. The touch of punk was cool, like a bit of Gideon had gotten on Harrow somehow. Like people could see she was Gideon’s babe. “Man it’s a nice day,” she marvelled, buoyant and pleased. “All I need is a sick sword fight for it to be perfect. Hey! We should go boot up Kiki after our date!”

“You’re welcome to use the software any time,” Harrow assured her.

“Well yeah, cause that’s my home turf now, but I want you to come with me. I want to show you something.” She wanted to tell her something, actually, but she couldn’t say that without being suspicious so yeah. 

The Library had an impressive facade, all stone and columns and big glass doors that Gideon held open for Harrow (with an exaggerated bow, and a murmured ‘Your Eldritch Highness’ as she passed). Inside, however, was one of the boringest rooms Gideon had ever been in, and she had been raised in a sterile laboratory.

“This is the library?” she said, unable to conceal her disappointment. “It’s like a computer lab for introverts!”

The room was the size of a large classroom, grey and sterile, and filled with individual cubbies. Each mini cubicle had a desk with a chair and computer and that was it. 

“What else would you expect?” Harrow’s voice was the familiar icy contempt. “With these, students can access any piece of information anywhere. All the relevant books have been scanned, all recent findings are available electronically, all academic discussions are online. Through the school’s research account you can find any information you want.”

Even Gideon knew _that _was bullshit. The school could edit or block anything it didn’t want its students to see, and it would watch carefully as they accessed things. They probably had those freaky eyeball sensors in the screens so they could tell what words you were looking at. “It sucks. I hate it. Where’s the books? Where’s the dust and shelves and old ladies telling you to be quiet?”

“Ah,” Harrow said, and now she smiled slightly. “Those are in the archives.”

Gideon met Harrow’s gaze and once again admired the keen intelligence behind those dark eyes. “Well, can we see the archives?”

“If you insist on witnessing irrelevant relics of the past,” Harrow murmured, but she was pleased. Gideon could tell, because this time it was Harrow who took her hand and gave her a little squeeze. “I’ll show them to you.”

The back door of the library let them into a hall with a few offices and a reference desk. Gideon scanned the area, noting potential furniture that would be sturdy enough to use as cover, or high ground. She noted the windows in the back of the office area that were probably real and therefore a useful emergency exit, and noted the visible cameras, too. There were a lot of them - presumably Ortus would take them all out like he had at the warehouse. 

At the far end of the hall was another set of double doors that opened to Harrow’s ID card scan. She opened the door for Gideon.

“My Cavalier,” she murmured and Gideon went through with a grin. 

“Ahh, here it is,” Gideon approved. She swept a hand around her at the high wood shelves full of dusty books, the soft carpet beneath her feet designed to cushion a valuable tome if it should fall, and the soaring ceilings. In the distance she could hear the soft hum of servitor robots moving around the place, at least two of them, and the far wall had huge windows where the second floor would have been, above the bookshelves. Easily climbable bookshelves! Though the fall from the windows would suck. “This is the kind of place two students can sneak off to for kisses between the stacks.”

“Idiot.” Harrow led Gideon down a random aisle, heading to the left and deeper into the Archives. “This is where people come to access physical copies of things. People who care about aesthetics, for example, or who want to see handwritten notes in the margins that weren’t transcribed, perhaps. The Seventh are in here a lot.”

“For kisses?” 

“For aesthetics,” Harrow said firmly.

Gideon paused in the narrow aisle, forcing Harrow to stop too since they were holding hands again. Dust motes floated in the single shaft of sunlight that snuck through a gap in the shelves above them. The carpet muffled the sound as she spoke. “Hey, did you talk to Pal about those cooties yet?” she whispered.

“I did,” Harrow whispered back. Her expression was inscrutable. Her face was close to Gideon’s.

Gideon wet her lips, suddenly nervous. Did Harrow have a secret nanite infestation or not? “And?”

"Nothing,” Harrow said. “I’m safe.”

Gideon’s breath caught, but before she could answer a low grinding sound came from behind her. She spun around to see a robot entering the back of the aisle - on wheels, four crab arms in the air. She shoved Harrow behind her with her broken arm and raised her right, cursing herself for not bringing the god damn sword -

“Griddle! Did it startle you?” Harrow grabbed her left arm, holding her still. Her voice was deliberate and clear. “It’s just re-shelving books.”

“Oh.” Gideon stared, slowly lowering her hand. This robot was much cleaner than the one in the warehouse had been, and a stack of books was on top of it. The crab arms were carefully plucking the books, rotating them, and maneuvering them back onto the shelves where they belonged. They moved delicately but Gideon had a sudden, vivid memory of the crushing grip that had snapped the bones in her arm. 

Harrow brushed past her, advancing on the robot. Before Gideon could protest she had raised her hands and gestured a few short, sharp motions. 

The robot froze. 

Harrow turned back to her (putting her BACK to the ROBOT, HARROW) and gave Gideon a smile that was probably meant to be comforting. “I paused it. You really hate robots, don’t you?” she added, in a ‘you had better agree’ tone.

“They’re fucking creepy,” Gideon complained, grabbing Harrow’s hand to pull her away down the aisle. “Get away from that thing, geeze. It’s freaking me out.”

“You’re the one that wanted to see the archives,” Harrow said, but followed Gideon along the aisle to the next open area. 

“Well they’re better than the library,” Gideon grumbled back. “What’s this part?”

The back of the archives had a cozy reading area, with a bunch of chairs that rich old men would use to smoke cigars in arranged in a circle around an ugly rug that was probably expensive. There were potted plants and a few huge vases on the floor and stuff, but the most interesting piece of decor was the small sign that read RESTRICTED across the door in the back corner. 

“This is the reading area,” Harrow said. “Not many of the objects in the archives can be removed, but you can peruse the books or examine the artifacts here. There are scanners too, and for most things you’re allowed to use your tablet to take pictures.”

“Cool,” Gideon murmured, not really listening. Harrow talked some more about the different classes of artifacts in the archives but her voice had lost its sharp edge that commanded attention and Gideon took it as a tacit signal to ignore her and look around. 

The restricted section seemed to only be accessible by the labelled door, which was almost certainly a steel fire door. There was a keycard scanner beside it and a camera above it, but she could get through both with her sword if she had to. She had no way of seeing behind it, but she made a note of where the huge, high windows were in relation to the door so she could figure out where the exterior wall of the restricted section was. That way she could always carve a hole in the damn wall and get them out, so long as they kept their bearings. Mind you, that would be incredibly obvious, and there was no guarantee the exterior cameras would be off. Still, it was good to be prepared. 

Another book-shelving-crab-monster rolled by at the far end of the reading area. Did Cam have any weapons that would be useful against robot monsters? Gideon wished her arm was properly healed. Fighting with a broken arm, even a half-healed one, was a dangerous handicap. 

“Griddle? Are you ready to go?”

“Yeah.” Gideon’s attention returned to her diminutive overlord. “Let’s jet. The archives were cool, though. Thanks for showing them to me.” And then, just to show that she had done her Cavalier duty in Casing The Joint, she leaned forward and pressed a little kiss to Harrow’s forehead. “You’re so smart.”

She was rewarded with a little grumble, and Harrow’s warm hand in hers for the walk back to the crypt.


	23. Kiki's Secret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kiki has a secret.

“Man,” Gideon complained as she locked the gym door behind them. “Why didn’t you tell me you were gonna take me to check out the archives?”

“There are many times that I won’t be able to tell you ahead of time what we are about to do, Griddle.” Harrow’s tone was dry as the bones she wore in her jewelry. “Your reactions are much more convincing when they’re genuine.”

“Yeah but I wanna know what’s going on.”

“Now you do.”

Gideon rolled her eyes and turned away, crossing the floor to boot up the fight simulator. “I mean I want to know what’s going on before it goes on, Harrow.”

Harrow’s pointy shoes made a quiet clacking sound on the tiles as she followed Gideon. “Do you trust me?”

“Well, obviously.”

“Then trust that you’ll know what’s going on at the most opportune time. What are you doing?”

“I’ll tell you at the most opportune time,” Gideon shot back. Eat it, Harrow.

The sim booted up flawlessly, running through the connection count-in and equipment tests without issue. Gideon still hesitated before putting on the googles, though.

“So.” She glanced at Harrow, who was doing her best impersonation of a wooden post. “The last time you saw me log on, we had a fight.”

Harrow took a ragged breath in, but didn’t speak.

Typical nerd with no words for feelings. Gideon braced herself and showed Harrow how it was done. “I just wanted to say,” Gideon continued, “that if you make fun of what I say to Kiki today, in any way, shape, or form, I will throw you in the pool and then chop up all your shoes.”

Harrow cleared her throat. “While that would be preferable to physical assault -”

“You got off easy with that noogie!”

“ - I promise that I will not make fun of anything you say today. Further, it was wrong of me to mock you when we were children and I regret what I said then. I only said it to make you angry, which was deplorable behaviour.”

“You regret things?” Gideon stared at Harrow to see if she had started doing something weird like crying again.

Harrow merely channeled the emotional energy of a dishcloth at her, her face expressionless. “You know I do.”

Oh right, the whole being-powerless-to-stop-her-evil-parents thing. “I mean things you legit shouldn’t have done. Whatever! Anyway you should regret it, cause I do love Kiki, and you shouldn’t have been a shit about it when we were smaller.”

“I acknowledge this.”

Gideon’s cheeks were hot. The goggles creaked in protest in her grip and she had to relax her hands. Robot Harrow was so frustrating. “Do you love anyone? Or have you?”

“…yes.”

“How would you feel if I made fun of you for loving that person?” Gideon glared at Harrow, silently daring her to say something like ‘Oh well Kiki isn’t real’ because then she would definitely be taking flying lessons into the hot tub.

“… I would probably curl up and die,” Harrow said in a whisper. 

Goths were so dramatic. “Yeah, well, then.” Gideon abandoned this flaming wreckage of a conversation and strapped the goggles on. “Let’s say hi to Kiki.”

Harrow could watch on the screen like a plebe, but to Gideon, she was back where Home had always been: the virtual training room. All the settings were as she had left them, an eclectic mix of Karate dojo walls, Jiu Jitsu mats, tactical target dummies and various combat props. It gave her a weird rush of homesickness for the South Pole. Weird, because the South Pole fucking sucked, but still homesickness because there had been some good times, dammit. Most of them here. With Kiki. 

“Well hey there, stranger! Long time no see!”

Gideon spun around eagerly, a huge grin on her face as her heart rose in her chest. Clear and vivid, here was the spandex-wearing valkyrie who had been a trainer, therapist, friend and mom her whole life. Kiki still had the same tan skin, thick brown hair tied back in a ponytail, and bright gold eyes like Gideon’s own. She even had the friendship bracelet Gideon had made for her when she was ten out of a knotted shoelace and a stolen bead. Kiki had scanned it and added it to her avatar before making her return the bead.

“It’s really you.” Gideon’s voice cracked for some stupid reason. Why were her eyes burning, this was a happy moment! Kiki threw her a hug and belatedly she mimicked the gesture, giving herself a quick hug then tossing it forward, with her arms wide. “Oh man do I have a lot to tell you.”

“I bet you do! It’s been weeks since we had a session!” Kiki came closer, standing just in front of Gideon now that their hug toss was done. “And from what I see, we’re not in Antarctica anymore, are we?”

“No, we’re in Oceania,” Gideon said. “At Canaan University.” 

“Oh gosh,” Kiki said, her bright smile fading to a concerned little frown. “Then Gideon, I have to ask you to be patient for a moment. I really do want to hear all of your news, but I have top priority orders that have to come first.”

“Wha \- okay?” Gideon stared, baffled. “What orders? It’s really you, right?”

“Oh yes, it’s definitely me.” Kiki reached forward and squeezed Gideon’s hands. Gideon carefully kept her hands still so she didn’t ruin the illusion as the force feedback in the gloves pulsed against her skin. “You know those extra modules I was programmed with?”

“Yeah?” Gideon said, right on top of Harrow muttering “extra modules?” in the background.

Kiki’s expression snapped to the wooden smile she always used when there were observers. “Is Harrow watching?” she asked brightly.

“No no, it’s okay,” Gideon assured her. “You can be real in front of her now. She’s my friend.”

“I can leave,” Harrow offered, her voice oddly disembodied.

“No, I need you to stay here.” Gideon had too much going on in her brain to remember everything she was gonna say just to tell Harrow about it again later. And Harrow was smart. She caught things and remembered things, and this was important. “Kiki, can you bring her into the room so I can see her real quick?”

“Just let me turn on the externals - there we go!”

A rough approximation of Harrow now stood in the three dimensional space where Harrow was in real life. It looked like someone had modified a simdummy to make it look like Harrow. Gideon knew this because she had done that a few times in the past. “Cool.” Virtual Harrow seemed to be looking at nothing, but Gideon knew she was staring at the screen in real life. 

Harrow frowned. She raised an arm, and wiggled her fingers, watching her virtual stand in do the same thing on the screen. “Impressive.”

“Thank you,” Kiki said, because she was a polite role model of a lady. “Gideon, I have information I was programmed to give to you, and only you, once you confirmed that you were no longer in the direct power of the Nonagesimus doctors. Are you sure you want to hear it in front of Harrow?”

“Hell yeah I do. What is it?”

Kiki merely nodded, accepting the verbal confirmation. “Please sit down.”

“Shit,” Gideon murmured, but knelt with Kiki. A moment later and Harrow did too.

From behind a weapons rack, out walked a new virtual person. A woman, with flaming red hair and a strong jaw, rendered in the loving detail that Kiki herself was. 

“Oh my god,” Harrow breathed.

The woman — the ghost of Lenore Nav — joined them and knelt beside Kiki, facing Gideon. “Hello, Gideon.” Her tone reminded Gideon of Aggie. Pragmatic, hard, but not totally devoid of warmth.

Kiki and Harrow were watching Gideon closely. So was the ghost of her mother. She should probably be freaking out or crying or something, but this didn’t feel like a mother. It felt like a stranger. Gideon’s chest was numb. Her temples prickled with sweat. She couldn’t look away from the ghost. She should totally be saying something.

She flailed to the side, grabbed Harrow’s hand, and held onto it like it was an anchor. 

“Okay.” Gideon cleared her throat and tried again. “This is pretty fucked up, I’m not gonna lie.”

Kiki spoke up. “This is a limited image that your mother made and entrusted to me when you were a baby. It’s not actually her, more like a recording, but with a bit of personality mixed in.”

“It will feel like the real thing,” Lenore said dryly, “because I only had a bit of personality to begin with.”

“What the fuck,” Gideon complained to no one in particular. 

Harrow squeezed her hand. 

Gideon seized on that bit of normalcy. She should introduce Harrow, obviously. “Mom,” the word felt strange to say, “this is Harrow, my girlfriend.”

“Hello, Harrow,” Lenore said politely.

Kiki cleared her throat. “Harrow is the daughter of the Nonagesimus doctors.”

Lenore nodded thoughtfully. “Please accept my deepest condolences,” she said to Harrow.

“Thank you, I do,” Harrow said, sounding totally unbothered that she was talking to, like, the ghost of moms past. “You have information for Gideon?”

“Yes, if you’re ready to listen, Gideon.” Lenore’s gaze turned back to her. “I recognize, of course, that seeing me here must come as a shock since I only instructed Kiki to give you this information if I died before we left the research station.”

“Yeah, it’s a bit of a shock, alright,” Gideon managed.

“Why did you ask her to wait?” Harrow said. “Is it information concerning my parents?”

“It’s information I didn’t want those shifty bastards to know. Before I say anything, let me be clear that the information in this image is twenty years old, so things may have changed. Bear that in mind. Also, it would be helpful to know how I died.”

Kiki smiled brightly. “That is a uniquely tactless way to ask!”

“Oh my god I do sound like my mom,” Gideon whispered.

“The more you resemble me, the better,” Lenore said. “How’d I bite it?”

“You died in a blizzard,” Gideon said, the oft-repeated phrase almost meaningless.

“No,” Harrow corrected. “Actually, you were murdered.”

“Hold up.” Gideon tore the goggles off her face and stared down Harrow, who was now clutching her own hands in front of her. “WHAT.”

Harrow quailed back. “They were murdered with the blizzard!”

“How do you murder someone with a blizzard!?”

Harrow drew a shuddering breath, and continued in a small voice. “They were scheduled to do a routine maintenance visit to exterior equipment. The weather report was for a fine day. They took you with them. But a storm front moved in when they were far from the base and caught them. My mother is in charge of weather reports. She falsified the report so they’d go out. She knew they would die. So did my father. They pretended their data had been mistaken. They sent out search and rescue drones once the blizzard was past to retrieve the bodies but you were alive.”

“And you tell me this now?” Gideon demanded, incredulous.

“When was I supposed to tell you?” Harrow dropped her gaze, shrinking in on herself like she could just vanish. “I didn’t want to tell you.”

Gideon didn’t want her to vanish so she took her hand again with a huff. “I don’t know! Goddamn, how many dark secrets do you have in the umbral vault of your brain, girl?”

“So many.” Harrow’s answer was subdued, but her pale horrified look had passed into a flushed one so Gideon put her goggles back on (had to take her hand back for a second, sorry Harrow) then once again faced her two moms. “Sorry bout that, just had to scream at Harrow.”

Kiki was doing her best ‘well that is bad but I’m reassuring you that it will be ok’ face while Lenore looked thoughtful. “They really didn’t waste time, did they. I guess this was when they were expecting Harrow?”

“Yes,” Kiki said.

“There can be only one,” Lenore intoned, then shook her head. “What a pill. See, Gideon, this is exactly why I didn’t want to leave you behind, probably. Murderous doctors. Did they try to kill you a lot?”

“No,” Gideon said.

“Occasionally,” Harrow said, correcting her.

“This is bullshit,” Gideon whined. 

“This is _appalling_,” Kiki said stoutly. “They should be arrested immediately and stripped of their responsibilities.”

“I’d strip them of their skin,” Lenore said.

“You’d never prove it, Ms. Kiki,” Harrow said. “I’m sorry but the attempts were very subtle. I’m not even sure of all of them. I only know about the blizzard because I overheard my parents talking about it when they thought I was sleeping.”

“How else did they attempt it?” Lenore said.

“Painkiller overdose,” Gideon answered automatically. “After the earache. Right?”

“Probably,” Harrow agreed. “And some other kind of toxin when you got that fever.”

“Oh, I thought that was the flu. I guess evil makes more sense then germs since no one else was sick.”

“Yes,” Harrow said.

“Alright.” Lenore frowned like she was reading a clipboard. This ghost needed a clipboard. “So: extreme cold, some toxins, and lethal drug doses. That tracks. Do you heal quickly?”

“Yeah!” Gideon said. 

“How fast?”

“Like, two or three times as fast as most people. Broken bones are fixed in two weeks.”

“Two WEEKS?” Lenore sat back on her heels, looking disgusted. “It should be two days for a simple fracture! How broken was this bone we’re talking about?”

“Uh, I mean - my arm’s broken right now, the smaller bone snapped here -”

“How do you know it should be two days?” Harrow interrupted.

“I know what my nanites can do,” Lenore said firmly. “Gideon, Kiki is going to show you how to focus the healing effects. But first, I need to give you a mission.”

“Okay?” Gideon said.

“The nanites in your bloodstream are the best of my life’s work. They protected your father, in their earlier iterations -”

“Iterations?”

Lenore paused, taking stock of Gideon’s expression. “Allen had the first version of protection nanites. They kept him safe. I developed them with the help of Canaan university’s research team, and we tested them in the Cavaliers as a phase one trial. That’s the first time you try things in humans.”

“But I got the better bots?”

“You got the _best _bots,” Lenore said. “I used all the feedback from the first trials to improve them. They’re safer, more resilient, more intelligent. They are a huge step forward in bionic well being!”

“Why doesn’t everybody have them, then?” Gideon wondered. “They spread, don’t they?”

“They sure do,” Lenore said, and a manic gleam was in her eye now. “How much do you know about scarcity, Gideon?”

“Harrow?” Gideon asked.

“Go on,” Harrow said.

“There’s enough food to feed the world,” Lenore continued, “but millions go hungry. There’s enough work for everyone, but unemployment is at twenty percent. There’s enough wealth for the very rich to stay very rich and still allow the poor to be comfortable, but entire exnations are in squalor.”

“Are you a communalist?” Gideon marvelled.

“There are powerful people,” Lenore continued over her, “who are deliberately making other people’s lives shitty.”

“Why?”

“Because it lets them be more powerful and more rich and they are evil scumbags,” Lenore said flatly.

Gideon could accept that. It was what had happened to her, pretty much. “So they don’t want everyone to have super awesome nanites like me?”

“They do not want everyone to have super awesome nanites like you,” Lenore agreed.

“…do I need to kiss everyone?” Gideon wondered.

“What?” 

Harrow cleared her throat. “Gideon has already transmitted her nanites at least once. We believe that another girl had a host population that was infected via prion action after they kissed.”

“Oh! Yes!” Lenore smiled, looking as proud as she had in the photograph. “My babies will cannibalize competing nanites to replicate themselves. It’s not just a prion collapse, it’s a conversion. Your ex has super nanites now, Gideon. Probably.”

“Oh,” Gideon said. “Okay. Cool.”

“I need you to continue my research and get these nanites tested more broadly. They’re designed to replace others but they can’t seed a nude.”

“They can’t send nudes?”

“They can’t infect someone who doesn’t already have nanites,” Harrow explained.

“Like you?”

“Exactly,” Harrow said, giving her hand a squeeze.

“Well that’s bullshit.” Gideon frowned at her mother’s ghost. “How do I give Harrow super awesome nanite powers too?”

“Seed her with an older strain of bootleg immunity nanites and giver her a smooch kid, it’s not hard.”

Gideon shook her head, making the whole world wobble. “She’ll get sick!”

“For fuck’s sake,” Lenore said. “It’s a fever! Stick her in a tub of ice-cubes, she’ll be fine. I died for these. Allen died for these. I need you to get them into the hands of the people. Not the government. Not the school. Not a corporation in the oligoboard. Do you know who the Redmarx are?”

“No,” Gideon said.

“Yes,” Harrow said because of course she did, the damn nerd. “They’re a loose network of professionals, trying to effect social change at a grassroots level.”

“Yeah that’s them, plucky rebels and all that. Glad they still exist. Can you contact them?” Lenore pressed.

“Yes, I believe so,” Harrow said.

“See?” Gideon said to Kiki. “This is why I needed her here.”

“Talk to them,” Lenore said. “Test the nanites on a larger scale. Get them to the people who need it.”

“Do you have any of the documentation for your work at all?” Harrow asked.

Lenore shook her head, frowning again. “I couldn’t risk it in Kiki. I encrypted it separately. Does Gideon have access to my old data pad? Not the one I used at the pole, the one I used back here when I was working on fertility amplifiers.”

“I don’t have anything of yours.” Gideon didn’t even have time to get some despairing in before Harrow was squeezing her hand again.

“The archives,” Harrow said quickly. “All of your old research equipment would be in the archives here on campus, wouldn’t it?”

“Probably,” Lenore said. “I left it behind. In case I got murdered,” she added, her voice just slightly accusatory.

“Hey,” Gideon protested, “Harrow didn’t do it. Hang on.” 

She pulled off the goggles again, whacking one of the lenses off of her nose as she did it one-handed, and looked at Harrow. “You know a lot,” she pointed out.

Harrow nodded.

“I’m still down to raid the archives,” Gideon said, “but are you sure it’s okay to drag Pal and Cam into this? It’s getting kind of big. We could probably do it ourselves, if we just have to sneak in and steal a computer.”

"I would much rather have them there,” Harrow said. “They have access to resources I don’t, and I think they’ll want to come when they hear all of this.”

“Because they’re our friends?” 

“Yes,” Harrow said. “And because they’re both members of Redmarx.”


	24. Gideon's Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Oh no."_

Gideon massaged her sore forearm as she looked over the packages on her bed. Even more intriguing than the formal clothes was the note that went with them. 

_Griddle,_

_Wear the vest but not the jacket. Don’t do it up._

_Don’t wear the tie._

_Top TWO buttons on blouse to remain open._

_No sports bra!_

_Fold the sleeves back like this: open cuffs, back to the elbow, then fold again to mid-forearm, so cuff sticks out slightly near the elbow. See attached diagram. _

_Wear the belt with the skull buckle on it. The belt that came with the pants is unworthy of this outfit._

_Do not even consider wearing your own socks. Wear the black silk socks provided._

_Tuck the bottom of the pants into your black combat boots. Yes they will get wrinkled. That is fine._

_I know no one will see your socks but I will know they are there, do not wear them._

_Wear at least four of the silver rings on your right hand._

_The bracer with the claws will replace your cast. It’s in the package marked KNUCKLES. Pretend it is a modified medical device. (It is not.)_

_\- H_

“Knuckles, eh?” Gideon left the black suit aside for now and tore open the shipping package that Harrow’s elegant script marked as the cool one with claws in it.

It felt SO good to use both arms again. 

The afternoon had been wild and incredibly badass. Kiki and Lenore had showed her how to focus on her injury in order to heal it. Well not really focusing on the injury itself, but pretending to use the injured arm, sparring and blocking and parrying with it so that her body went ‘oh shit we’d better heal that fast!’ and the nanites hopped to work. She and Harrow had done that for the better part of two hours in the Ninth gym before coming home to make the Sixth nerds X-ray it again. 

The look on Palamedes’ face when he said it was completely healed was a glorious treasure that Gideon would carry in her soul forever. And now she was free of her damn cast (though they had given her a removable one to wear for show, since she really shouldn’t be castless this fast). She had taken a proper shower with two working arms and styled her hair with two working hands and now she was picking off packing popcorn from a wicked looking gauntlet with all ten of her perfectly functioning fingers. 

“This must be what Cam meant by feral,” Gideon said to herself, strapping the weapon on. It covered her left forearm much like the removable brace did, but instead of being blue neoprene it was black leather and smelled like oil. There were flexible rings on the end that hugged her fingers and, coolest of all, three short, sharp blades on the back of the hand that curved up and forward. Smaller decorative spikes echoed them up the back of the gauntlet but the big pointy bois on the front meant business. 

Curiosity quickly overcame her, and she took the claw gauntlet off in order to try on the rest of her ‘spring fling’ outfit.

The full length mirror earned its keep once the whole getup was on. “This is sick,” Gideon whispered in approval, turning this way and that to admire it. She looked like she was a rich vampire lord who had welcomed all her enemies to a great feast, but now the feast was over and she had ditched her jacket and tie to go to the afterparty where she would both murder someone and pick up chicks. As a final touch, Gideon put on her shades.

“Hey Harrow,” she called over her shoulder, not looking away from the mirror. “Nonagesimus! Come check me out!”

A moment later and Harrow’s feather duster silhouette appeared in Gideon’s doorway. “… you are wearing your regalia.”

“I’ll regale ya!” Gideon grinned hugely, finally turning from the mirror. “Come in, come in! Don’t lurk. Come check this out. My ass looks amazing.”

Harrow carefully stepped into the room, closing the door behind her, and stood in the scattered packaging and discarded clothes and towels like she was afraid to get any of the mess on her. Her eyes were glued to Gideon though. “The clothes fit you perfectly,” she finally said, and there was definitely a hint of pride in her voice to match the flush at her neck.

“Yeah, you nailed it. Praise where praise is due. Man, I thought,” Gideon had to stop and laugh, she was almost giddy. “I mean I thought the spring fling was gonna be all flowers and stuff, and then - this is so cool. I look so cool!”

“You really do.”

Gideon smirked, and pushed her shades up onto her head. “You like it? No flaws in your plan so far?”

Harrow’s expression got a bit suspicious, and she looked Gideon up and down more carefully. Her eyes snagged briefly on Gideon’s chest, probably noticing that she hadn’t bothered to wear any bra at all. In her defence, sports bras were the only kind she owned. But it was her boots that Harrow finally frowned at. 

“You’re wearing neon fuzzy socks.”

“How did you KNOW THAT?” Gideon threw her hands in the air in disbelief. “You can’t see them at ALL!”

“I can see them in my mind’s eye,” Harrow deadpanned. “Also, you left the black ones on the bed.”

“Dammit! Ok, well, aside from the socks. All good?” 

Harrow’s eyes met hers, and a little smile curled those thin lips. “… you’re perfect.”

“Hah!” Gideon pointed at her. “You said I was perfect again!”

“If you tell anyone, I will merely deny it.”

“Yeah but I know you said it.” Gideon grinned, cherishing the thought. Imagine Harrow messing up twice to say that. She must have messed up, because her face was red. She wasn’t answering, either. Just standing there, in Gideon’s room, with her hands in delicate black lace gloves, her fingers twined together too tightly in front of her. Harrow was squeezing her own fingers. She was going to rip those gloves. 

Gideon closed the distance between them and carefully pulled Harrow’s hands apart, holding them in hers. 

“So, what are you gonna wear?” Gideon asked more gently. 

“Black.”

“With skulls?”

“…yes.”

“Like, so many skulls? Or just a few tasteful ones?”

“Griddle.” Harrow looked up from their joined hands, her expression guarded as she searched Gideon’s eyes. “Why did you tell Kiki and Lenore that I was your girlfriend?”

“Uhh.” Inside Gideon’s brain there was a horrible grinding shriek as mental gears ground together and snapped off of their axles, toothless and spinning. “What?” She loosened her hold but Harrow just held her hands tighter and she didn’t pull them away. “I dunno. Method acting?”

“Method acting,” Harrow repeated, her tone level.

“Yeah. So I don’t mess up. Cause I’m bad at lying. I’m just gonna pretend it’s true all the time to make it easier?” Why had she said that as a question? Harrow’s eyes were so big and dark and her lashes were curled up and her eyebrows were so dainty. She looked like a doll. “Is that okay?”

“If that is what you require, then it is acceptable.”

Harrow was still holding Gideon’s hands. Gideon couldn’t figure out what was happening so her mouth gave up on her brain entirely and struck off on its own, saying crazy shit. “Are we gonna dance? At the dance?” 

Harrow frowned, a little furrow of disapproval. “I don’t dance.”

“Cool,” Gideon’s lips said entirely on their own. “Are we gonna kiss?”

There was a pause.

“Why would we kiss?” Harrow asked slowly, her body rigid.

“Cause we’re girlfriends?” A slow grin crept onto Gideon’s face. She felt the familiar flush of delicious victory at the stunned look on Harrow. “And everyone’s gonna see us and go ‘ohhh they’re dating so hard, look at them,’ all jealous.” She pulled Harrow closer, keeping her movements slow. Unhurried. Undeniable. 

“If,” Harrow began, her breath catching as Gideon slid an arm around her waist, holding her other hand to the side like they were dancing already, ‘if your mental construct requires it. Then yes, as part of the ruse, we could.”

Gideon meant to say ‘we should practice.’ Her brain was screaming that surely practice would make it more convincing, when the moment came. So they didn’t bump noses. 

She leaned down and softly kissed Harrow. On the_ lips._

Harrow was rigid in her arms but her lips were soft, and hot against hers. Harrow barely moved, didn’t breathe, so Gideon kissed her again, softly and slowly. 

At the third kiss, Harrow laced her fingers through Gideon’s, and finally kissed her back.

Harrow was kissing her back. Actively kissing her, holy _shit, _what was happening, oh my god. And now Harrow was up on her toes, her arms around Gideon’s neck. It was insane and it felt so good that Gideon would have eviscerated anyone who tried to stop them now. 

Harrow stepped forward, Gideon yielded ground. The back of her knees hit her bed. She sat down hard and now Harrow was above her, the thin lace on her fingers scratching Gideon’s cheeks, her nails on Gideon’s jaw. Gideon groaned, parting her lips, and when Harrow licked her bottom lip she hauled her up into her lap to kiss her again. 

Harrow straddled her lap eagerly, her hands on Gideon’s shoulders for balance. Gideon let herself fall backwards. Her head caught the wall in a glancing blow, sending her shades flying. Harrow tried to pull back, concerned, about to talk, but Gideon pulled her back down for another kiss.

The weight of Harrow laying on top of her was wickedly light. She could feel her ribs through her dress and even those were hot to the touch. Every piece of Gideon was aflame now. Why had she ever thought Harrow was cold, she was so warm. She was so fucking hot.

“Oh no,” Gideon gasped, her eyes wide in sudden panic.

“What?” Harrow froze, her face flushed, panting under her dishevelled bangs.

“I really like you,” Gideon blurted.

“What.” Harrow’s face screwed itself up into an indecipherable expression.

“Like for real,” Gideon whispered. “I’m sorry!”

Harrow sat up with a feral cry, still straddling Gideon’s hips but pulling her hands back. “You’re_ sorry?”_

“Wait, wait!” Gideon tried to figure out this riddle real fast. “I mean. I thought you were ace.”

“Well I’m obviously not! Idiot!”

“Oh.” Gideon blinked up at Harrow, who looked like she had just run a mile. Her lipstick was smudged. Her face was red. Was she going to cry again? “Okay. Well.” She braced herself for a pummelling. “In that case… I’m not sorry.”

Harrow’s indignation crumpled, and so did she. Gideon frantically jerked the spiked gauntlet out of the way as Harrow collapsed against her with a low cry, curling up into a ball against her chest.

“Hey now,” Gideon said, carefully giving her robowizard a comforting hug. “It’s alright. I just. Really like kissing you and you’re super… cute ‘n’ pretty. And smart. Kinda evil. Listen, I’m just saying,” she pressed on doggedly as Harrow peeked up at her. “You’re my type, babe. And I think that if you think about it you might like me just a little bit too!”

“Griddle,” Harrow began, pained.

“C’maaan,” Gideon pressed. “Let’s date for real. Gimme a chance, Harrow. I’ll court your socks off.”

Harrow closed her eyes and let out a long breath, and this time when she lay against Gideon she was neither rigid nor shaking. Just limp, like all the fight had gone out of her. “Alright,” she whispered.

Gideon smiled brightly and hugged her again. “Sweet.” 

Gideon slowly rubbed Harrow’s back, letting Harrow’s intricate brain process the idea that someone might actually like her (which, to be fair, would probably surprise lots of people). For her part, Gideon was floating on the softest cloud, bathed in sunlight. Harrow was her girlfriend. For real. She had kissed Harrow on her frowny little mouth and Harrow had tackled her onto the bed for more. That made her grin widen. Harrow thought she was hot too! Harrow Nav? Gideon Nonagesimus? 

“Why are you laughing?” Harrow murmured.

“I dunno. I’m happy!” Gideon pressed a little smooch to Harrow’s hair. It sent such a surge of warmth through her that she gave Harrow a hug, hard enough to make her squeak. “Aren’t you happy?”

“I am trying to understand what happened,” Harrow said, making no attempt to stop lying on Gideon’s chest. 

That was fine with Gideon. She liked it. “Let me know when you figure it out. We can kiss some more.”

“That is a powerful incentive.”

“I could kiss you while you think?”

“You said I’m your type,” Harrow began, propping herself up on her elbows.

“Yup.” Gideon let her hands rest on Harrow’s lower back. 

“I always thought those were your type.” Harrow waved a hand at the buff warrior babes decorating Gideon’s wall.

“Oh, nah. They're hot,” Gideon admitted, “but more like, goals. You know? Inspiration.”

“So if you were going to post pictures of women you found desirable…”

“Sorcerers Gone Wild.” Gideon tried to imagine it. “Nerds and Nudes. Dainty Dolls Do Dallas.”

“You are utterly absurd!”

“Pff,” Gideon scoffed. “You’re the one dating me.”

That deflated Harrow’s annoyance. “It doesn't feel real,” she said, like a forlorn Gothic waif overcome by dramatic feelings. “Ten minutes ago I didn’t think I'd ever step foot into your room.”

“Why not?”

“Don’t you remember?” Harrow looked at her. “Our first day here. You said I wasn’t allowed into your room.”

“I did?” Gideon blinked, trying to remember. “Hunh. Well you're allowed in it now!”

“When you broke your arm defending me, and Camilla told me to get you a shirt,” Harrow said, “I took the one you had left in the bathroom, so that I wouldn’t trespass in your room.”

“Oh.” Gideon wasn’t sure what to say to that, but it was touching that Harrow actually listened to her rule. “Well then you get bonus friend points. But I think in that case you probably could have bent the rules.”

“Is it alright, then, to bend the rules sometimes?” Harrow lay her cheek against Gideon’s shoulder, so her lips brushed Gideon’s neck as she spoke. “Even your rules?”

Oh God she could not do philosophy right now. Gideon tilted her head back in invitation instead, and when Harrow kissed her neck she forgot the question entirely. Her arms tightened around her girlfriend, pinning her close. 

Harrow didn't seem to mind. She kept kissing Gideon’s neck, her lips moving with the intent purpose of a scientist as each new contact brought another low sound from Gideon’s throat. Gideon closed her eyes and submitted to it, dying a thousand times with each open mouthed kiss Harrow pressed to her skin. She had never felt this full before. She had never wanted more so badly. 

“Y’know,” she managed, as Harrow explored her collarbone. “You’ve seen me topless, but I haven't seen you topless.”

“Griddle.” Harrow’s voice was a mixture of amusement and exasperation. Her fingers parted the collar of Gideon’s blouse and she pressed another kiss just below her clavicle.

“Harrow.” It was a plea. 

“I averted my eyes, before.” Harrow kissed the top of her sternum, just above the parted tuxedo pleats of Gideon’s shirt.

Gideon absolutely could not deal with this torment any more. She grabbed Harrow behind the thighs and rolled over. The blades from her gauntlet tore the bed sheets but she barely noticed. Harrow was beneath her, her knees pressed against Gideon’s hips, her hair spread on the pillow. “Okay, but consider: this time you wouldn't have to look away.”

“You're proposing…?”

“Topless makeouts,” Gideon answered promptly.

Harrow regarded her gravely, and for an instant Gideon’s whole life hung in the balance. 

Then she nodded. “Go lock the door.”

“Yes ma’am!”

It was with a wild surge of triumph that Gideon Nav leaped to do Harrow's bidding. She had locked this door many times before but now, for the first time, she and Harrow were finally on the same side.


	25. Two Lizards

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A promise is made.

Harrow Nonagesimus was absolutely shattered. 

Her life had been a dark, stone shell until Gideon Nav had kissed her. Those soft, tender touches had been a striking hammer that finally broke through the stone to reveal the geodic brilliance of light-refracting crystals inside.

The first thing she had done, once she had regained her sanity and stopped hysterically sobbing into her pillow, had been to drop three of her classes. Her original plan of taking seven courses per semester in order to graduate quickly was no longer viable, because a) she intended to spend as many waking moments as possible with Gideon, and b) why on earth would she rush through a degree that kept them together so effortlessly? And so, dropping down to a mere four courses (barely a full time course load), Harrow found she now had much more time for chasing kisses.

So she did. 

She would sit in the gyms and watch Gideon spar with the other Cavaliers. She would bring her tablet and study nearby while Gideon worked out, though she studied nothing so much as the flawless anatomy of the Ninth’s true Cavalier. And sometimes, when tears burned in the corners of her eyes, and her heart broke for the wasted years of antagonism and distance, she would deliberately distract herself with the searing memories of kissing Gideon. Of laying beside her, finally, unbelievably being able to touch her, to stroke her hair back from her honest face, and to taste the sweetness of her skin. Even in her mind, Gideon’s touch could burn away any lingering shadows, scattering light and the alien feeling of joy, until Harrow could find an excuse to haul Nav into one of their rooms and lock the door again.

Whatever faint guilt she may have felt about neglecting her studies was entirely banished on Tuesday, in the banally domestic kitchenette of their apartment, when Gideon surprised her.

It was not that Gideon herself said anything particularly surprising. They were bickering, or, more charitably, bantering. The infants from the Fourth house were visiting again, bringing more punk style accoutrements to Gideon. 

Harrow never minded the young teens. She veered away from their company naturally, the oil of her introversion fleeing with hydrophobic alacrity from the water of their gregarious obliviousness, but it wasn’t that anything was wrong with them. They offered their affections to anyone, like puppies, and Harrow was nervous that she would, metaphorically, kick one by accident. 

“These are sweet,” Gideon said from the living area, trying on spiked leather wristbands that the Fourth had brought her. 

Harrow would have approved of any fashion that made Gideon’s face light up like that but she had to privately admit that spikes and leather on Gideon felt right. It was also hot as hell, though she would never say so to Gideon. 

“Hang on, let me show Harrow,” Gideon said, and appeared around the cupboard to show off her latest treasure. “Yo, Nerdomancer, check these out!”

Harrow gave her a glower over her coffee. “Check what out? Your shoes? I see that you have managed to master tying your own laces. Well done.”

Gideon’s face lit up with the sally, making Harrow try to think of more ways to tease her. “The armbands! Look at all the spikes.”

“One for each point of your IQ,” Harrow murmured.

Jeannemary peeked around the cupboard then, her expression worried. Harrow withdrew, already feeling guilty for taunting Gideon in front of the teens. 

“Aw, you shouldn’t say things like that to your girlfriend,” Jeannemary said.

“It’s okay,” Gideon said, ruffling the girl’s hair in a gesture that would have been obnoxious from anyone else. “I speak Harrowese. She thinks they’re sexy and wants to give me kisses.”

Harrow blushed, and slouched lower in her chair, as if she could hide behind the feeble shield of her mug. Gideon was infuriating - but somehow her blithe response had banished the rising tide of anxiety caused by Jeannemary’s concern. _I speak __Harrowese_. The statement was so inane, but it had a deeper wisdom. Had they not grown up together, sharing an intense and isolated environment? Harrow had been more privileged than Gideon in many ways, but Gideon had had more freedom in others, ironically. They had both been miserable. They had both understood, at a fundamental survival level, wired into their amygdalas since infancy, that being kind to each other was forbidden. And so, as children do, they had made up their own language. Taunting and obstruction. Insults and aggressive indifference. Anything to interact. Anything for each other’s attention. 

She brought it up to Gideon later that day, after she had had the time to examine the thought from every angle. 

“Griddle,” she said as Gideon searched the cupboards for bread that they were definitely out of. “I’ve been thinking about something you said earlier.”

“I say a lotta things, babe, you gotta be more specific. Man, we’re out of buns too.”

“You said,” Harrow continued, trying not to be distracted by Gideon’s posterior as her Cavalier bent over to search the lower cupboards, “that you spoke Harrowese.”

“Oh yeah, for sure. I’m on to you and your little ways.” Gideon turned to smile at her and Harrow’s heart opened like a flower to the sun.

“What do you mean?” she asked, desperate to see if Gideon agreed with her thesis, not wanting to taint the results with her own opinion first. 

“Being dicks to each other is, like, our love language. It’s cool, now that I know you don’t actually mean it.”

Hearing the word ‘love’ from Gideon’s lips immediately overloaded several dopaminergic pathways in Harrow’s midbrain. “I don’t mean it,” Harrow admitted in a rush. “I never meant it.”

“Even that time I accidentally killed your plant?”

Harrow frowned, remembering the ‘watering with salt water should work because it’s still water’ argument. “I withdraw my absolute statement. _That _was asinine. But,” she hesitated, because Gideon had crossed over to the table and leaned down, looking at Harrow with a knowing smirk that was as insufferable as it was attractive. Harrow lost her train of thought but managed to swerve onto a parallel track. “You deserve someone who praises you.”

“You can praise me with kisses,” Gideon suggested.

Harrow gave in. 

They kissed, there in the kitchen, with Gideon’s hands on the table and Harrow’s fisted in her lap, and the mere contact of those lips on hers were enough to banish troubling thoughts and sanctify the locale all at once. Harrow could now add the kitchen table to another place that Gideon had kissed her, another treasured notch in the mental tally.

The interlude was interrupted by the arrival of the Sixth pair, which was just as well. Gideon was incredibly distracting.

Harrow half listened to their greetings and banter, reflecting on the simple wisdom Gideon seemed to have. It was like her heart was so big that it had taken over half of her thinking. She never seemed to agonize over decisions, or guess at intent. She instinctively understood herself and everyone around her. Gideon really was brilliant, in her own way.

“Hey, noodles are a starch, right?” Gideon said. “Can I put peanut butter and jelly on noodles?”

“Are you high?” Cam asked with absolute sincerity. 

Harrow sighed. 

The days passed impossibly fast that week, each moment vanishing into a memory as she tried to seize it. Her classes were a blur of trying to complete the homework and take notes at the same time, so she would not have to sacrifice any of her time outside of them. Her academic advisor offered to have a meeting to discuss her objectives for the semester, possibly concerned about her abruptly dropping nearly half of her course load, but she turned him down. What was a king to a mob? What was an advisor to a young woman in the throes of violent infatuation? Nothing but an obstacle, and one that she dodged adroitly. 

Beyond her inebriation from the ambrosia of Gideon’s kisses, another emotion motivated Harrow to savour every possible second with her. The night of the Spring Fling grew ever closer, and with it, the inevitable danger that their nefarious afterparty would bring. More rested on their break-in than ever before. The upcoming endeavour (or ‘robo-heist’ as Gideon kept insisting on calling it) would be even riskier than the break in at the robotics warehouse. They were seeking information about the new strain of nanites that Gideon carried, for one thing. Reports from Dulcinea’s family were that Cytherea was entirely cured of her illness, but chose to rest and recuperate at home. On Wednesday, Protesilaus was called home and mysteriously never returned to school, with no reason given. 

“Man, do you think she smooched her own cousin?” Gideon said. 

It was Friday afternoon and they were in Camilla’s room, purportedly to go over the plan, but the meeting had devolved into gossip rapidly. 

“I’m pretty sure there’s more effective ways to trade nanites,” Camilla said. “Don’t be rude.”

Palamedes was frowning at his tablet. Not the tablet he used for coursework, obviously. The tablet he had brought from home, running on a proprietary operating system used by criminals — and members of Redmarx. Though to be fair, the distinction was redundant. The Venn diagram circle of the former encompassed the latter. 

“So why isn’t she coming back to school?” Gideon asked.

“It’s just as well that she isn’t,” Camilla said lightly. “She can be our ace in the hole.”

“Hah! Yeah,” Gideon tilted back her chair to an alarming degree, balanced on the point of falling but not quite tipping over. “She’s the getaway driver.”

Camilla smiled, but Harrow could not. More secrets she had to keep from her Cavalier. She mistrusted such secrets these days, but could not deny that they were necessary. At least Gideon accepted the limitations on the transfer of data, for now. One day, when they were not living on the campus where every interaction was constantly monitored, Harrow swore that she would be able to tell Gideon more. But for now secrecy was imperative, and Gideon could not keep a secret to herself if the secret were made of crazy glue and duck tape. 

Harrow turned her attention back to Palamedes. She already knew what he was staring at. Their list of two main objectives, in bullet form. 

Data on the nanites - Lenore’s computer. 

Data on the Ascension Project - location unclear. 

It seemed unlikely, now, that there was any direct connection between the two, but it was possible. Lenore had made an image of herself, after all, which made it clear that she had access to the secret technology of mental imaging, but her ghost had emphasized that the nanites were intended to combat governmental control nanites and promote well-being in their hosts. Once they had more information about them, Camilla intended to acquire some for herself. But probably during fall reading week, so she didn’t have to miss classes for the fever. 

As for the Ascension data, none of them knew where such information would be located, if it was even in the Archives at all. They would search as much as they were able to, focusing on technology from that era, then leave before their window closed. It would not be the first fruitless attempt they had made, though it was certainly the most daring. 

“Harrow?” 

Her gaze snapped to Gideon, whose feet were now up on the desk. “What?”

“You okay? You look like you swallowed tacks.”

Harrow berated herself for letting any concern show and composed her features. “I was just reflecting on the difference in our current mission parameters and the previous endeavours I’ve been on.”

“What, the warehouse break in?” Gideon said. “No worries, this will go even better! Cam and I are both there to fight robots for you. What could go wrong?”

Harrow sighed. No, she wanted to say, not the warehouse. All of her previous ‘missions,’ aside from that fateful theft, had been entirely virtual. Even if she had been discovered by authorities they would not have been able to do anything — she lived at the South Pole. Out of their jurisdiction entirely, and the signal would have been blamed on adults regardless. But now? Robots were the least of her worries. “I’m sure it will be fine,” she said quietly. 

“Nerves before a fight are normal,” Camilla said, bracing as always. “Why don’t you go find something to do to settle yours?”

“What’re you gonna do?” Gideon asked, letting the front feet of her chair fall to the floor with a loud bang.

“Same thing I always do before a match,” Camilla said. “I’ll nap.”

Once they were back in Harrow’s room, Gideon picked up the conversation again. “Ya know,” she said, smirking her way over to sit on Harrow’s bed. “I can think of a _few_ ways to settle my nerves.”

“Inevitably,” Harrow said. Her own stomach was in knots and she was afraid to kiss Gideon lest she vomit all over her Cavalier. But Gideon wanted to kiss her, and she did not want to reject any advance, ever. She let out a slow breath, trying to calm her stomach. 

“Or,” Gideon added in the same suave, flirty tone, “I could hold back your hair while you puke in the garbage. Eh? Eh?”

That finally made Harrow laugh, though it was a weak sound. “Perhaps a hug,” she managed, her voice barely audible as she made a request that, prior to a few days ago, she would never have made to anyone, ever. 

“Aw, c’mere babe.” 

And so she ended up in Gideon’s lap again, with Gideon’s strong arms around her waist and her head on her Cavalier’s shoulder. “This is better,” she murmured, closing her eyes. The heat of Gideon’s body helped her relax, and her touch was grounding.

“What are you so worried about, anyway?” Gideon murmured. “It’ll be fine.”

“I’m worried we’ll be shot and killed,” Harrow answered in the same low tones.

“… yeah, well. We probably won’t.”

“Comforting.”

“Listen,” Gideon tried again. “It’s just a school. Worst case is we battle some oversized custodian bots and call it a win. I know I got hurt the first time but I can do better! Seriously! And Cam’s got a fuckin’ electrolance, do you know how sick that is?”

“And if we’re all expelled?” Harrow leaned closer, as if she could remove every molecule that separated them. “Then what?”

“Then we’ll run away from here,” Gideon promised. “I’m loaded, seriously. We’ll just go.”

“I’m still technically a minor, by local laws,” Harrow reminded her. “I’d have to go home. Back to the lab.”

Gideon held her closer and leaned down to whisper a lover’s vow in her ear. “I’ll totally kidnap you! Muahahah.”

Harrow let out a quick giggle, which was mortifying, but it made Gideon laugh for real, so the humiliation was worth it. “Where would we even go?” She wanted to hear more of the story, to escape into it just a little bit longer. 

“Somewhere warm,” Gideon said thoughtfully. “Somewhere where they still speak different languages, maybe! That’d be cool. Somewhere with spicy food and houses that aren’t full of spyware, and parks without constant camera monitoring. Somewhere that a nineteen year old can get a job without her damn parents’ permission.”

“Oh, you’ll put me to work, will you?”

“Hey you got skills. I have skills too! We’ll get a little dojo with an apartment above it and I’ll teach people how to kick ass while you hack into evil bank accounts or whatever.”

“Evil bank accounts.”

“And we’ll get like a cat and a lizard.”

“A lizard?”

“No offense, my necrotic technophile, you just seem like someone who ought to own a lizard.”

“A lizard.”

“Maybe like with a human skull inside its terrarium.”

“A skull, Griddle?” Harrow opened her eyes, the image so vivid she could imagine it clearly now. “Really?”

“It could be a fake one,” Gideon offered generously.

“I will get the gothic lizard enclave,” Harrow agreed, “but you seem more like a dog person than a cat person.”

“Oooh, yeah. A big dog!”

Harrow pulled back. “I’ve changed my mind.”

“No no, I like the idea of a dog now.”

“I don’t mean about the dog,” Harrow said, wrapping her arms around Gideon’s neck. “I mean about kissing.”

“I’ll get you _two_ lizards,” Gideon promised, pulling Harrow down onto the bed again.


	26. It's a Dance-off

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of course there's a dance-off.

For once Harrow’s lips were red instead of black, and Gideon could not stop looking at them.

“Griddle.” The lips barely moved. “You are staring.”

“Uh yeah? Of course I’m staring at my incredibly hot girlfriend, what else would eyeballs be good for?”

In her defence, Gideon didn’t really need to pay much attention to where she was going. It was raining hard outside so they were in the perfectly flat, dry, and well-lit tunnels beneath the campus as they made their way towards the Third House dance hall. Palamedes and Camilla walked ahead of them and the Fourth House pair toddled along behind. 

“Careful,” Harrow teased in her completely deadpan tone of feigned disapproval. “That was almost romantic.”

“Hey I’m just saying, if I could only eat one thing for the rest of my life it’d be pizza, right, but if I could only _look_ at one thing for the rest of my life, it’d be you.”

A soft “_oh_” from Jeannemary echoed gently off the graffiti-covered walls and Gideon knew she had totally said something hella romantical.

Jeannemary and Isaac had dressed to impress as well. Jeannemary was some kind of dark sorceress and Isaac had dressed as a skeletal lackey. They both looked twelve, and definitely needed little pumpkin-buckets to finish the look. Gideon didn’t say that, though, because A) that would be mean and 2) she didn’t have to, everyone was clearly thinking it whenever they looked at the teens. 

Camilla, for her part, look like she could have led the Black Parade herself, while Palamedes… well, he looked like a nerd who had remembered at the last minute that there was some kind of “thing” to attend and put on a black cloak. The cloak was big and swishy and kind of shimmered, but otherwise Sex Pal had profoundly disappointed Gideon with his super lame costume. She didn’t complain, though, cause it just made hers look more badass. 

Harrow’s outfit, though. _Harrow’s outfit._ Gideon’s own vampire-lord getup felt barely adequate to wait at her Lady’s side in. Clearly the castle on a hill where the beleaguered travellers found themselves after their carriage broke down on a dark and stormy night belonged to Lady Harrow Hark-The-Raven-Nevermore. The secret cabal of vampires that lived below some major metropolitan city and controlled it from the shadows all knelt in fealty to their Dark Lady, Harrowhark Nonagesimus. The silk dress, the black lace, the fucking corset, the high collar and crucifix details on the gloves, it was all hypnotising and Gideon was the most willing victim ever. The windows were open. Garlic was outlawed.

“You’re staring,” Harrow whispered.

“You’re perfect,” Gideon whispered back, and lifted Harrow’s hand to kiss it.

This time it was Isaac who made a little “oh” sound.

The next turn in the tunnel let them hear the pounding baseline of whatever song was currently rocking the Third House ahead of them. It was a promising beat, like a cardio level from Lee’s trainer, and Gideon’s pulse spiked in anticipation. “I hear the music!”

“I thought that was your heart, Ninth,” Camilla said, sounding smug. 

“If Gideon’s heart beat in five-four time, I’d be concerned,” said Dr. SexPal the Buzzkiller.

“It’s not my fault,” Gideon said with a grin. “Harrow-kun makes my heart go doki-d-doki.”

Harrow facepalmed with her free hand. Only Gideon heard her mutter “…baka.”

Gideon laughed out loud, the feeling of victory in her chest once again. 

A few more stairs and doors went by and finally, finally, Gideon was at The School Dance. 

She had imagined it many times, in various permutations: streamers and balloons, perhaps. A large cake, maybe. Hoop skirts and pigtails, surely.

Nothing in her G-rated experience had prepared her for a Third House Rave.

It was loud, it was dark, it was thrilling. She felt the bass beat in her chest as they entered the darkened hall, a diffuse glow coming from coloured spot lights and the occasional strobe that flashed into the strange-smelling mist. Students danced side by side or in tight circles, or walked around the edges of the room with drinks and snacks. Harrow pulled her along by the hand, leading her around the crowd towards the back of the room where the walls were padded and the music was slightly less deafening. 

“This is crazy,” Gideon laughed, staring at everything. Some of the students had really cool costumes (though none as cool as hers and Harrow’s) and some were just dressed in party clothes. She caught a glimpse of Magnus, her RA, speaking sternly to two students on the dance floor as if he had just broken up a kerfuffle of some kind. She wondered if his wife was walking around looking for students who were dancing too close so she could separate them and remind them to Leave Room For the President’s Love between them. 

“Typical Third House ostentation,” Harrow said, dismissing the coolest party ever created. 

“Well then Third House knows how to party,” Gideon said.

“I believe that’s their motto, yes.”

The six of them fetched up by the wall and Cam struck off to get some drinks. The heavy song ended and a new, perkier one started up.

“Oh I love this song!” Jeannemary clapped her hands and bounced on her toes before grabbing Gideon’s hand. “Come on, let’s dance! You have to try it!”

“I don’t know how to dance,” Gideon protested, though she was smiling. It was hard not to smile at Jeannemary, she was so earnest as she tugged on Gideon’s non-spikey arm. 

“Everyone knows this dance,” Jeannemary insisted. “Look, just follow along. It’s easy!”

Gideon tried to appeal to Harrow for support but her Nefarious Goblin Queen was busy plotting with Palamedes. Outflanked, she let Jeannemary and Isaac usher her onto the dance floor. 

Everyone definitely knew the song, that was for sure. Gideon did a little awkward two step as she watched the crowd. The song was catchy as hell, a proper earworm that had absolutely no business among the classic hits like Black Parade and With Arms Wide Open. It was one of those gate crashing songs that was on every DJ’s secret list of shitty songs that Must Be Played, and the entire gym was bopping along, moving their arms in a jerky rhythm. They all did a quarter turn to the right, which Gideon copied a half beat behind. 

And then everyone started doing the same dozen moves again. 

“Oh,” she brightened, catching on. It wasn’t like an actual, proper choreography. It was just a pattern drunk people did for fun! She could do that. 

Her second run through the catchy gibberish was pretty much as good as everyone else’s, and by the time she had spun back around to where she had started she was getting all the hand gestures right. 

“See?” Jeannemary laughed as the song ended to applause. 

“That was fun,” Gideon admitted, already perking up and listening to the intro to the next one. “Oh shit, I know a dance for this!” 

“You mean Lee’s?” Jeannemary asked, practically begging. “Level 4-2? Do it with me?”

“I’m out!” Isaac said.

“Move aside, kid,” said a tuxedo-clad skeleton to Isaac as she joined them. Gideon recognized her as one of the Second House cavaliers, but they hadn’t had the chance to meet yet. “Time for a cav dance.”

“Yay, Marta!” Jeannemary clapped her hands as Marta stepped up beside her, and Gideon realized that throughout the room a few more students were cheering and making space for isolated dancers. 

The last whispered _let the bodies hit the floor _echoed through the hall, and the tension hung in the air for a beat. Then the drums kicked in, and two dozen Cavaliers dropped into the guard position with a battle shout that you could almost hear over the suddenly deafening music. 

Gideon’s heart kept the beat and a grin split her face as, for the first time, she ran through Lee’s Virtual Battle Trainer Choreography with other _real live people_ beside her. Jeannemary followed every move with a wild enthusiasm, evidently knowing level 4-2 by heart as well. Marta’s moves were precise and forceful, her expression intent above the tiniest hint of a smile that probably would have been wider in a real fight. 

As the musical kata took them in a wide turn, Gideon caught sight of the Third’s little circle closer to front. Corona and Cupcake were both doing the moves, and for an instant Cupcake’s eyes met hers through the crowd. His smug look vanished from her field of view as she turned the cartwheel kick - Jeannemary and Marta did it too, though Gideon’s was cleaner. She caught a last glimpse of Cupcake looking mightily offended before she spun again, starting a longer combination of blocks and kicks. He was probably pissed that she even knew the dances - but didn’t everyone, if they used Lee’s trainer? The dance choreography was the funnest exercise on there! Next to swords, of course.

The song ended in a final defiant yell, back in the guard position, followed immediately by cheering and high fives between the cavs. 

“Ninth, you’ve got good form for someone who’s self-taught,” Marta said. 

“Thanks. Hey, we should spar sometime!”

“Sounds fun.”

“You hit like a truck, don’t you?” Gideon asked with a grin, returning the crushing handshake.

“Trucks only hit you once.” Marta winked, then headed back to her friend who was holding her jacket and looking proud.

Isaac appeared out of nowhere and hugged Jeannemary right there in front of everyone, which was super cute, and then Gideon was looking for her own pair of approving eyes.

Harrow was staring at her. Harrow, Cam, and Pal were all watching her from the sidelines. Cam gave her a thumbs up, which propelled her to cloud nine, and when she turned her proud smile to her Queen of the Scintillating Darkness, Harrow raised her lace-gloved hands and, briefly and discreetly, made a little heart gesture at her. 

Gideon dramatically clutched her chest in a super convincing heart attack of shock, turning away from her friends only to come face to face with Corona, aggressively smiling at her.

Corona was done up properly, Gideon had to give her credit. Her eye makeup glowed in the black lights and faceted gems decorated her skin around her eyes and up her temples, disappearing into a wild, bouffant hairdo. The contrast of the makeup and the black pseudo-suit with a slit pencil skirt made it look like the Fae had hired a high-priced lawyer. It was hot, and just a little bit intimidating, which was of course Gideon’s weakness. 

“Holy shit,” Gideon said intelligently.

Corona’s smile widened. “Hi! I’m so glad you could make it! Are you having fun?”

Gideon’s brain frantically threw around cue cards looking for the one that might have a hint as to why Corona was over here being extra friendly at her. “Yeah! This party is awesome. You guys did a great job!” They were each doing a weird half-lean to the side and forward so they could hear each other’s shouted words without actually shouting directly into each other’s ears. Corona had a lot of piercings up the side of her ear. Gideon wondered if she had had them done at the same parlour. She wondered if Corona noticed her piercings. 

“Thanks! I saw you do one of Lee’s dances! It was really good!”

Gideon’s brain threw the cue cards everywhere, giving up. “Thanks!” she hollered back. “What do you want?”

Instead of being insulted Corona just laughed, like Gideon had said the funniest thing ever. Her head tilted back and the gems glittered, and she touched her own chest with her fingertips like a fine lady who’d been told the drollest jape. Her eyes were bright as she answered. “Babs hasn’t had the chance to spar with you yet. Would you do one of Lee’s dances with him? As a special favour to me, please?”

“Oh shit you mean like a dance off?” Gideon grinned. “Hell yeah, let’s throw down! Tell him to pick the song!”

“Any song?” Corona said. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, any of Lee’s fourth edition ones, I know all of ‘em,” Gideon assured her, wanting Cupcake to feel okay about picking his favourite. She’d go to town on any level. She had had two hobbies, growing up: Kicking ass and chewing gum. And she hadn’t been allowed to chew gum.

Corona gave her a double thumbs up and danced her way back into the crowd. Gideon grinned, elated, until someone short and pointy grabbed the back of her jacket and hauled her back to the wall.

“What was that?” Harrow demanded.

“I’m gonna do a dance off!” Gideon said.

“_What?_” That clearly surprised her. She frowned, glaring out at Corona’s vanishing back. “Against her?”

“Nah, against Babs, her boy toy.”

For some reason that made Harrow frown harder. “I don’t trust their motives.” She looked back up to Gideon and raised a single dangerous finger. Their eyes locked. “Win,” she commanded.

Gideon fell to one knee and saluted with a clasped fist to her heart. “I’ll smoke him, just for you.”

Harrow didn’t look away. She stepped closer, raising a delicate gloved hand to touch her fingertips to Gideon’s jaw. Gideon’s world was reduced to the two of them, there in that moment. The pounding bass and strobing lights were the frenzied pulse of her universe, the dark eyes and red lips above her were the face of god. 

The song ended with a crash and in the sudden silence Harrow seemed to remember herself. She pulled back, dropping her gaze as she fussed with her lace, and Gideon rose smoothly to her feet, still riding the high. It was a perfect moment in time. She knew this feeling well: whatever level the Third picked, she was about to absolutely crush it. 

The disembodied voice that came over the loudspeaker was Corona’s, and the low, steady thumping music beneath it was the lobby music in Lee’s trainer. Steady. Unassuming. Anticipatory. 

“Hiiiiii everyone!” 

From how the crowd reacted, you’d think Corona was about to give everyone a free car. 

“It is _so wonderful_ to see everyone here tonight! Hi! Yes, hello! Guys, we have a treat for you! For the first time in four years we’re going to have a match during the dance! It’s a dance off!”

Gideon didn’t know what the story was with whatever happened four years ago but the crowd apparently did, because they were hooting and hollering and clearing a space in the middle of the dance floor as Corona continued her announcement. 

“The dance will be the choreography from Lee’s fourth edition, level 6-9!”

Gideon didn’t even bother saying ‘nice’ along with half the crowd. She was already kneeling to take off her boots. Six nine was a capoeira level. Bare feet were required.

“The winner will be called by general acclamation of the crowd! So you all have to watch closely! For the Third House, I present Naberius Tern!”

“Gideon,” Camilla’s voice was urgent beside her, barely audible over the sound of the Third House crowd cheering for their cav. 

“I know,” Gideon said. “The socks don’t match the outfit.” She stepped out of her combat boots, revealing the rainbow striped fuzzy socks beneath them.

“Gideon!” Camilla grabbed her arm. “You can’t do cartwheels with an arm brace on,” she said, leaning in closer. “Your arm’s supposed to be broken, remember? He picked that level on purpose.”

“It’s fine.” Gideon clasped Camilla’s other arm, a warrior’s gesture, and tapped her forehead to hers. “Watch this.”

Camilla didn’t have time to protest further, as Corona was calling Gideon over the sound system. 

Gideon shucked off her fuzzy socks. Harrow scooped them up and shoved them into a boot to hide her ungoth shame, but it was a bro move, not one of censure. Gideon would thank her later. No, she’d thank her right now, by kicking Babs’ ass. 

The crowd parted for her and she strode like a gladiator into the wide clear space in the middle of the dance floor. Naberius had taken off his Baron Sam D. jacket and top hat and was giving her a WTF look. Probably because she still wore her own dress jacket and a wicked looking gauntlet. That was fine. Everything was fine. She was in the zone. 

“Capoeira, eh?” The music was low enough that everyone could hear her call to him. “Nice pick, dingus.”

“You could have chosen the song,” he shrugged, a self-satisfied little smirk on his shiny little lips. She bet Corona was holding his chapsticks. “You offered me the choice, so I chose. Do you yield already?”

“Hell no.”

“There’d be no shame in it, Nav,” Corona called sweetly. “You really shouldn’t hurt your healing wrist just for a little match. Harrow, call her off, darling.”

Gideon looked over her shoulder, surprised, to find Harrow standing at the edge of the ring. Her Dread Mistress’s arms were folded before her in judgement and the look she was giving Babs was blacker than her boots as she quoted, of all people, Crux.

“Death first to vultures and scavengers.”

Gideon’s heart soared in her chest as the crowd cheered this absolutely metal quote. She kissed her fingers and sent a victory V to Harrow, who merely nodded fractionally. Facing the ring like a red-headed Valkyrie, Gideon pointed at Corona. “Hit it, babe.” 

She and Babs dropped into the low, wide stance of the _ginga__,_ moving side to side in time to the Brazilian beat, their arms bent and ready. One thing about capoeira was that despite all the twists and rolls, the dance was fundamentally a combat exercise: you always kept your eyes on your opponent. She watched Babs across the ring as they went through the first sequence, taking each other’s measure.

He might have picked the level just to take advantage of her supposedly bad arm, but Babs was no slouch at it either. He moved with the confident perfection of someone who had had several dance trainers with unpronounceable names full of accents on the vowels throughout his life. He was precise. He was accurate. He looked good doing it. 

Time to find out how stretchy her jacket was. 

The first round of kicks began and Gideon flowed into them, changing each kick and roll into its most advanced form to avoid using her left arm. When Babs did the au auberto she flung herself into an au batida, the more impressive and - more importantly - one-armed L-kick version so popular in break dancing. 

The crowd reacted instantly. They might not know the choreography by heart but it was clear that the fighters weren’t doing the exact same one. A smirk crossed Babs’ face again but Gideon doubled down, ignoring him and blowing kisses to the crowd as she rocked through another ginga step. They didn’t know the dance. They would be trying to guess who was doing it right, and who was doing it wrong. All she had to do was be perfect.

And so she was. When Babs did the au sem mau, she did the au giro sem mau. When he used two hands, she used one. When he used one, she flipped complete aerials, timing her movements to the music so it was impossible to tell that she should have done it just a bit more slowly. For the unavoidable one-armed motions she used her right, simply doing the mirror image of the move when the routine called for her arm left to be planted on the ground. Her gauntleted arm did nothing but block imaginary blows and provide momentum to her spins, and the flashing blades caught the light from the laser show spectacularly. 

The dance ended with a flashy scorpion kick, both fighters spinning back up to bow to each other as the song slammed itself to a close. 

Babs glared at her, visibly furious as the crowd cheered for them. Gideon pushed back her long bangs and smiled, giving her jacket a delicate little tug at the lapels to straighten it. She had to hand it to Harrow, the thing hadn’t popped a single stitch. She was dripping sweat down her ribs but she looked amazing. She ignored Babs some more, which was a deeply satisfying thing to do, and turned expectantly to Corona.

The Third Beauty was looking a bit nervous as she held her microphone with the same rigidity that she held that white-toothed smile on her face. “Alright everyone! Let’s hear it for our dancers! That was amazing!”

She let the crowd cheer for a moment. Babs tried to shake off his sulk. Gideon brushed an imaginary bit of lint from her sleeve.

“Alright,” Corona continued, her voice too-bright. “Cheer for the winner guys. Let’s hear it for our very own Naberius Tern!”

There was a lot of applause, and some very enthusiastic scream-cheering by one random guy in the crowd. 

“And for the Ninth?”

Suddenly, Gideon understood just what a ‘roar of approval’ sounded like. Her zen-like state crumbled under the full-throated cheers of her fellow students. She threw her fists in the air in victory, her eyes scanning the crowd as she turned. She recognized friends from Seventh Heaven, and nerds from the Sixth, and there was Marta with a look that said she recognized exactly how Gideon had stolen the win from Babs. 

And there was Harrow. Too dignified to cheer and scream like a peasant, but she had slipped free of her lacey little gloves in order to stick two fingers in her mouth and whistle the most piercing note of victory Gideon had ever heard. As Corona announced her as the victor of the match she stepped forward and caught Harrow’s hand, pulling her from the crowd into the circle. 

“Does that meet with your approval my lady?” Gideon asked, holding Harrow close.

“Kiss me,” Harrow ordered, clutching Gideon’s jacket.

“Hell yeah!” Gideon leaned forward, supporting Harrow’s weight easily as she dipped her, kissing her long and hard as the crowd cheered her name.


	27. The Morgue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Creepy.

“Did you see his face?” Gideon turned to Camilla as the four of them walked through the tunnels beneath the campus. She had already asked Harrow and Pal the same question, twice. “Like he had a mouthful of lemon and bilimbi.”

“If you had been playing the actual trainer level he would have won,” Camilla pointed out.

“Nuh-uhn, cause I would have taken off my gauntlet and kicked his ass.”

“I mean, that’s probably why he was so pissed. He was the better dancer according to the rules - but your performance was more impressive. It’s pretty typical of him. He’s too focused on technicalities.”

“Yeah,” Gideon said, deeply satisfied. “He sucks.”

They had left the dance right after her win against Babs. Gideon’s brain was drunk on the heady, new sensations of public approval, ass-kicking, and also kissing her girlfriend in the middle of a cheering crowd. This was the absolute best day of her life, and the fact that she might still get to fight a robot made it even better.

As if sensing her line of thought and trying to pre-emptively suck out all the joy from her soul, Harrow shot Gideon a frown and beckoned her by imperiously crooking a finger.

“If any of the utility bots bother us this time, leave them to me,” Harrow ordered. 

“What?” Gideon frowned back. She was acutely aware of the nanosword’s hilt pressed against the small of her back, where it was tucked into a hidden pocket. “Last time you told me I had to kill the one at the warehouse.”

Harrow’s eyeroll could have crushed a lesser being with the weight of its scorn. “That was entire weeks ago, Griddle. I’ve put my time to good use since then, when you haven’t been distracting me.”

“What, you fight robots now?” Gideon didn’t apologize for being distracting. It wasn’t her fault that she had been born so incredibly hot.

“Fighting mechanical units is a senseless waste and, as we’ve seen, dangerous. I’ve thoroughly studied the system commands of every robot that operates on this campus. Do you understand? You will let me deal with the robots.”

“You just don’t want me to break an arm again,” Gideon accused.

Harrow’s scowl deepened. “I’m holding you to your vow, Cavalier.”

“Alright, alright, I’ll let you play with the robots,” Gideon huffed. “But if any give you lip I’m going to mess them up.”

“They don’t have lips.”

“They’ll have even less when I’m done with them,” Gideon promised.

“We’re here.” Palamedes interrupted. “These are the stairs to the archives.”

Palamedes and Camilla were stopped at another unmarked, unremarkable door in the hall. None of these doors had any signs, and combined with the emergency lighting thanks to their Ortus-induced power outage, the whole hall had the unsettling air of a survival game with good graphics but crap content. 

Gideon shook off her nerves and smiled for Harrow. “We should have stayed in our party clothes.”

“Don’t be absurd,” Harrow grumbled, adjusting her satchel.

They had gone straight back to their residence after leaving the dance, wishing the Fourth house teens a good night in the elevator before parting. All part of the alibi. They had all changed into more practical clothing while Ortus did whatever it was he did to cut power to the cameras. They had just under an hour to get to the archives, find what they wanted, and get back to res, with no robot the wiser. Harrow had been snappish and tense as they got ready, obsessively prowling around the apartment and both of their bedrooms like she was worried she had forgotten something. 

For her part, Gideon had all she needed: her sword and her nerd. Her twitchy, nervous little nerd. “This staircase needs some zombies in it,” she said, her voice pitched just over the echoes of their footsteps on the steel grating of the emergency stairs.

“Griddle! You need to take this seriously.”

“I am taking it seriously. Super seriously. And we seriously need some zombies.”

Camilla looked back over her shoulder at Gideon. “Could you not?”

Shutting up wouldn’t normally be an option for Gideon but she did this time, because Camilla was her bro.

Palamedes fiddled with the lock at the top of the stairwell. Emergency exits weren’t meant to be emergency entrances and it gave him a bit of attitude before he finally jimmied it open. Gideon couldn’t see what he used to open it. Probably paperclips. It was always paperclips and hairpins in her video games.

They entered the archives in single file, and were swallowed by the silence.

The hallway and stairwell had been long, echoing places, where each breath came back to your ears and every scuff of your shoe kept you company. Here in the archives, the plush carpet and looming shelves of books captured any sound, giving nothing back. The sunlit airiness of the day was gone. Under the dim emergency lighting she could see that the tall windows were now shuttered in steel, blocking even starlight from entering. At the far end of the room a line of LED lights glowed sullenly: the utility bots, watching them in an unmoving row. 

If the tunnel had been filled with the darkness of an empty, abandoned place, the darkness of the archives felt close. Suffocating. Sentient. 

Gideon drew her sword.

She did not extend the blade yet, but the solid steel in her hand was a comfort. She stayed close by Harrow’s side as they crossed the reading area to the door marked RESTRICTED. By unspoken agreement, she and Camilla took up guard positions and watched the room, flanking Harrow and Palamedes as they pulled data pads and a small black object from their bags. 

Palamedes sounded calm and collected as he spoke, though his voice was low. “Here’s the RFID. We’ll need to test the algorithm.”

Harrow’s response was muttered, and accompanied by the quiet clack of plastic on metal.

“It’s the Dean’s signature frequency,” Palamedes answered. “It should open any door, if we can get the door to read it.”

“The theory is sound,” Harrow said. “But I’ve never done it this way before.” A sharp little snapping sound made Gideon glance over. Harrow had pulled the cover off of the data card scanner on the wall and was messing around in the wiring as Palamedes held up the black thing, which was now wired to his tablet. Harrow made a disapproving sound, holding up her tablet’s flashlight to see better. “These aren’t standard coded.”

“Can you -”

“Yes, hang on.”

Gideon exchanged a level look with Camilla. “That looks complicated.”

Camilla nodded, scanning the archives again for any sign of trouble. “Palamedes copied a keycard, but Harrow will have to make the door recognize their fake copy.”

“They’re so fuckin’ smart,” Gideon said, an inexplicable tightness in her chest. 

Camilla just nodded.

Behind her, Harrow abruptly let out a breath and the click of a latch announced their success. 

“Hold it open while I close the circuit,” Palamedes said, and he was smiling. Camilla grabbed the door and Gideon wiped the sweat from her palms. Harrow efficiently stowed away their gear while Palamedes ran a wire from the latch to some sensor in the frame. Gideon vaguely remembered it as part of the discussed plan, to make sure they didn’t trigger the alarm that would sound if the door was open for too long. They propped it open with a book so it wouldn’t lock behind them and Palamedes stepped back, motioning for Camilla to go first. 

“Go quietly,” he warned, but he was looking at Gideon when he said it.

She didn’t need to be told. The freakyocity factor in the archives was way too high, even for her sass. She followed Camilla into the restricted section, her sword at the ready, not knowing what to expect.

They found a morgue.

It looked like a morgue, anyway. It was cold, cold enough that her breath misted in the air. The floor was polished tile, the ceiling was black glass, the walls were steel slabs inset with massive steel drawers. The room was about as big as the Ninth’s gym and the front half was full of long steel tables with shallow drawers beneath them. Most of the tables were empty. Some held half assembled robots, tethered by trailing wires that ran like IV lines up to the ceiling, plugging into hidden sockets. The back half of the room was oddly empty, giving a clear view of the far wall that was the same black glass as the ceiling.

“What the fuck,” Gideon whispered.

Palamedes and Harrow were already moving around the room. Palamedes pulled out a small dome from his bag and set it on an empty table. With a tap, the little dome lit up, shining a brilliant blue light that cast stark, black shadows and made everything a hundred times worse. It was at least bright enough to see properly by, and Harrow took advantage of the light as she moved along the large wall drawers, inspecting the tiny engraved labels on each one. Palamedes took his flashlight and started scanning the drawers beneath the tables. 

Gideon almost told him not to waste his time there. Those weren’t storage drawers for computers. That’s the kind place you kept _implements_. Calipers. Scalpels. Needles. Or whatever the hell had been used on the sorry excuse for a robot on the table next to her. She moved closer to the legless unit. It looked like the one she had kicked, back in the hospital wing. 

It even had a half-moon dent on the chest, where her boot would have landed. 

“Don’t touch anything.” Camilla’s voice at her side made her startle. 

“I wasn’t gonna.” Gideon looked around, moving away from the vacant-eyed servitor. “I hate this place.”

Instead of laughing it off, Camilla gave her the same searching look she used when she diagnosed patients. “Why?”

“I dunno.” Gideon tried to put words to the feelings the room gave her. It wasn’t even that she had seen anything like it before. But it was the kind of room that the Nonagesimus doctors would have loved. “I feel like… my hair hurts, in here. It’s cold, but I’m sweating. I give it one in five odds that I puke.”

“Breathe slowly. We’ll be out of here soon.” Camilla gave the room a disapproving look, pulling out her electro lance. It was still collapsed, a two foot long rod with thick rubber grips. “I feel it too, though.”

That made Gideon feel better. She wasn’t being jittery, there were some legitimately nasty vibes in this place. She moved towards Harrow, and as she passed another long, steel table, a static field raised the hair on her arms.

“This place is hella haunted,” she complained quietly to Harrow, stopping behind her.

“A truly nonsensical observation. Check the top drawer.” Harrow motioned to the highest handle on the wall, which was just out of her reach.

Gideon went tiptoe and pulled the door open, doing a pull-up to look inside. The metal rim dug into her hands as she strained to look into the deep hollow space in the dim light. “It’s all chunky robot parts,” she said dropping lightly back to her feet. “No data pads.”

It was a small mercy that Lenore's ghost had been able to remember the model of the data pad. They knew what it should look like, at least, in whole or in part.

The sharp snap of a static shock jerked her gaze over to Palamedes, who was shaking his hand ruefully. “The ambient field is stronger than normal. Don’t shock yourselves.”

“I’m hard to shock,” Camilla said in a deadpan.

Gideon cracked a grin at that. “Is it cause you’re so well-grounded?”

Harrow snorted beside her, but there was definitely a little smile on Camilla’s face.

“Griddle.” Harrow knelt by the bottom drawer in the wall. The lower row held drawers about two feet high, wide enough to hold a corpse, and this one seemed to be resisting her attempts to open it. “This one is stuck. I’m going to unlock it again, and when you hear the latch click I need you to pull it open.”

“Oh, sure.” Gideon knelt in front of the drawer, planting one foot against the wall and getting a double grip on the freezing steel handle. “Now I know why you brought me.”

“Pure selfishness,” Harrow agreed, and passed the jury-rigged keycard over the scanning pad.

The latch clicked.

Gideon pulled.

The door gave way suddenly, jerking open and sending Gideon falling back under a table. A bright spark of static leapt from the steel door, arcing and jumping between the steel tables faster than Gideon could track it. It must have hit Palamedes’ light because it was abruptly pitch dark in the room, the only light now coming from small sparks that were spontaneously snapping to life like the ghosts of fireflies, and the pale glow of the two tablets.

“What was that?” Gideon scrambled sideways, out from under the surgical table to get back to her feet. Touching the ground was sending waves of static up her arms and making her hair float in a tingling halo around her. The thick rubber soles of her boots cut it off.

Harrow was already shoulder-deep inside the drawer and didn’t answer, but Palamedes was scurrying over. “I suspect that we’re not following the proper protocol to access the archives,” he said, his tone worried.

“No shit we’re not.”

“I hope we didn’t damage anything,” he added, ignoring Gideon’s valuable comment.

“With an EMP field this high, I’m sure the items are individually grounded,” Camilla said.

“Sextus.” Harrow backed out of the drawer hauling a wide, flat box. The top was a mostly clear, brown-tinted plastic, and inside were rows of circuit boards. “Help me look through these.”

Camilla pulled out a small single-purpose flashlight and held it in her offhand, illuminating the nerdomancers as they methodically checked the labels on the computer parts. Gideon left them to it, watching the room. The metal was still sparking everywhere, random pops of static discharges in the darkness. When the static snapped the robot IV lines it made them sway - or maybe she was just imagining that. A subtle movement jerked her gaze to the legless robot on the table by the door. It wasn’t moving. She was imagining things.

“This is boring,” she complained, adjusting her grip on her sword. “Hurry up.”

Harrow didn’t spare any brain cells to answer her, which meant she was already going at max speed. Surely she wasn’t nervous, though. She was never nervous. Probably just excited.

A particularly loud snap of static made Gideon jump, and the arm of the legless robot jerked and fell off the table, dangling limp from the shoulder.

“Oh my good-god-gravy!” Gideon raised her sword and extended the blade, feeling only marginally better.

“Put that away,” Harrow muttered, lifting one of the circuit boards to her light.

“No.”

“Sextus.” Harrow handed him the computer part and he took it eagerly, peering at it in Camilla’s light.

“This is it! It must be.” He stood, looking around.

“Great, let’s go,” Gideon said.

Camilla, bless her brilliant mind forever, nodded her agreement. “I’d like to get out of here as soon as possible.”

“We need to be sure, though.” Harrow closed the plastic case, leaving it on the floor for now. “It would be a tragic waste to have come this far for the wrong part.”

“Let’s just take all of them,” Gideon huffed.

“Tempting. But we still need to be sure. It’s alright, Griddle, it will only take a minute. We have the time.”

Gideon gave Camilla a pleading look but the goddamn traitor just nodded. “Let’s wrap this up, then.”

Gideon groaned but no one was listening to her now. It was rapid-fire nerdese between Harrow and Palamedes.

“I’ve got a reader, pass me the tablet.”

“Not on the table!”

“The static - right.”

“Over here, on the floor.”

“It’s encrypted.”

“Lenore gave us the key, I’ve got it.”

“The battery - thanks, Cam.”

“Need a wire?”

“I’ve got spares.”

Gideon moved past them to put her back to the wall of black glass, which at least wasn’t sparking and jumping. There must have been some kind of static preservation field on the drawers because now that one was left open there were more and more angry sparks snapping at them from any metal surface they could find. Her sword’s nanoblade was snapping and hissing too, so she reluctantly collapsed it back into the handle. For now.

Harrow and Palamedes knelt facing each other on the tiles, well away from the tables. The stolen circuit board was sitting on a soft cloth between them. Five different wires led from it, attached to their tablets, a battery pack, the data card scanner thing, and a tiny screen which Palamedes was plugging in.

White text flickered across the black screens of the tablets, the symbols flying by too fast for Gideon to see.

“It’s booting up,” Palamedes said, his voice hushed, his head bent over and nearly touching Harrow’s.

The tiny screen lit up. White. Then Black. The Oligocorp’s logo appeared, a five-pointed star over a globe.

A low sound caught Gideon’s ear. Beyond the whirring of the old processors, past the pops of static, came a steady, familiar sound of rubber tires on carpet.

Camilla heard it too, her head snapping up to stare at the propped-open door. She exchanged an urgent look with Gideon.

“I’ll go look,” Gideon said, already moving down the aisle.

“Don’t engage with anything!” Harrow called, but she didn’t follow. Gideon heard a muttered “Why is old tech so _slow?_” from her, though.

She gave the legless robot a wide berth, circling around to look out the crack in the door.

Right on the other side of it was a huge utility bot, its LEDs staring her right in the face.

Gideon froze, her heartbeat hammering in her ears.

“It’s hers!” Palamedes jumped up at the back of the room.

“Griddle?” Harrow called, worried.

Gideon slowly raised her sword hilt, not taking her eyes off the utility bot beyond the narrow doorway.

There was no way she could have seen the tiny vacuum bot coming.

It zipped out from under the utility bot, right between its treads, and careened off of the book holding the door open. Sheer instinct let Gideon grab the door handle, dropping her sword to do it but catching the door an inch before it closed. “Guys!”

“Time to move,” Camilla ordered.

“Oh, no.” A familiar, vaguely female voice came from every robot in the room. The half-mangled robot corpses came to life, slowly tilting their heads and cameras to point at each of the four students. “Stay.”

A flash of electrical discharged blinded Gideon, flinging her backwards into one of the tables as burning pain shot through her hand and arm. The door shut, locking itself with a loud click even as she lunged for it. She swore as she tried the handle. It didn’t budge, and her hand hurt like hell from the electrical burn.

She abandoned the door and dove for her sword. At the back of the room she heard Camilla’s electro lance extend with a crack as the cav armed herself. Good. She could destroy all these creepy robots, and Gideon could cut the fucking door to pieces and just hack their way to freedom. As her hand closed around the hilt, though, a brilliant light flooded the room. She raised an arm to shade her eyes as she stood to see what fresh bullshit this was.

The back wall of the room had lit up. The entire thing was a screen. And smiling at them all with artificial benevolence was the university’s AI: Registraria the Regulatrix.


	28. Not Today, Satan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> NOPE.

“Do not be alarmed,” Registraria said, her voice echoing from the half dozen robots around them. “You are perfectly safe.”

Gideon rubbed her sore hand and scowled, taking long strides past the metal tables that still snapped with static fields. Ahead of her, Palamedes had risen to his feet to stare up at the screen. Camilla was near him but facing the room full of robots, her electrolance still extended, the very picture of someone who _totally_ felt _super_ safe. Harrow was ignoring all of them, stowing their gear and stolen hard drive into her bag with gremlin efficiency even as a ten foot tall AI loomed above her. 

“We apologize for trespassing,” Palamedes said formally. Gideon couldn’t see his face, he was silhouetted against the screen. “We accept the standard punishment of academic probation for a semester and restitution for damage caused.”

Registraria laughed, and the camera zoomed out until she and her creepily clean desk were life-sized. It looked like her office was on the other side of a clear glass wall now, extending the chamber. She rose and came towards them, her movements unhurried. “Ah, Mr. Sextus. We have been watching you and Ms. Hect with great interest this semester. We don’t know if we should be surprised at your audacity, or surprised that it took you this long to show your hand.”

“Further,” Palamedes continued, standing straight with his hands loosely clasped in front of him, “I would like to go on record as requesting the presence of an attorney-advocate.”

Registraria shook her head but her gaze never left him, even when Gideon made it to Harrow’s side and helped her up. “We're sure you’re aware that we’re off the record here, Warden.”

“His name’s Warden now?” Gideon asked. Harrow shushed her.

“It’s unfortunate that you brought your minions along,” Registraria said with a faint frown. “It would have been much simpler to deal with you and your guardian alone.”

“Hey!” Gideon extended her blade, the whip-crack sound of it snapping from the walls as all eyes turned to her. “I’m Harrow’s minion, not his.”

“Griddle, shut_ up_,” Harrow ordered from the corner of her mouth.

Registraria paced along the glass wall slowly, like a predator behind a cage. “Is that your blade, Cavalier? Then it was the Ninth who was behind the break in! Curious. Do you even know what you stole?”

“Do you?” Gideon shot back.

Harrow spun on her, her face a black scowl. “Would you kindly shut up and let me handle the AI?”

“But we are not an AI.” Registraria gave Harrow a smile that was probably supposed to be reassuring. “There is nothing artificial about our intelligence, only the substrate upon which it exists. You must have suspected as much, if you were also involved in this felonious research. Teacher warned us that you were smarter than you ought to be. Are we correct in assuming that you are the Warden’s mysterious online ally?” 

“I am his roommate and nothing more,” Harrow said, the faint scorn in her voice making it sound extra authentic. Even Gideon almost believed her. “I also admit to trespassing but you’re currently holding us here against our will, which is a felony. Unlock the door.”

“No, no.” Registraria raised her hands in a placating gesture, dividing her attention between Harrow and Palamedes now. “We’re afraid that just walking away and pretending to be regular students again isn’t an option. It’s time for us all to have a very honest chat with each other.”

“Consider this notice that this conversation is being recorded,” Harrow said coolly. 

Registraria shrugged. “What you do with your tablets right now is irrelevant. The room is shielded, you won’t get a signal.”

Gideon turned her back to the smug smile that she couldn’t punch and surveyed the room with Camilla instead. So far the robots had done nothing but stare at them and blast sound. She eyed the door at the far end of the room.

“In the interests of ensuring your continued safety, Ms. Nav,” Registraria said, “please refrain from attempting to carve through the door. The metal is holding a significant current, which would destroy your blade and likely permanently injure or kill you.”

“This place sucks,” Gideon said with feeling.

“It’s only temporary, I assure you.”

“What do you want?” Harrow snapped. “An honest discussion about what?”

“What indeed.” Registraria sounded pensive and Gideon looked over her shoulder to see her frowning at Palamedes again. As if he was her biggest problem when it was clearly Harrow. “Let us start with you, Warden of Athens. What is your current goal? What is it you desire in life?”

“A broad question,” Palamedes said, cool as a cucumber.

“If you had a wish, what would it be, we wonder? A cure for Dulcinea? Or the true key to immortality, perhaps?”

Palamedes made a short “hmn” of thought. “If I had one wish… I would like you to reconsider the recent appeal about my student email.”

Camilla snorted in mirth. Registraria scowled, the room behind her darkening with her expression. “We suggest you take this seriously, Warden.”

“I would seriously like to have an email that does not sound like a proposition.”

As he spoke, the low grade nausea and unease that Gideon had felt since entering the room swelled. What she had dismissed as nerves or anxiety abruptly amplified. It was worse than the time she’d found a bottle of tequila when she was twelve. Her skin hurt everywhere. She pressed her free hand against her sweaty mouth, trying not to blow chunks all over the room.

Beside her, Camilla made a low sound of pain, and swayed on her feet.

“We don’t like to threaten,” Registraria said as Palamedes and Harrow spun around in alarm. She said something else, about productive discussion, but there was a ringing in Gideon’s ears and she could barely hear. 

Camilla sank to one knee, Palamedes anxiously at her side.

Harrow grabbed Gideon’s arm, the contact sending a nasty static shock through both of them. “Nav.” Her voice was urgent and low. “Griddle! Stay with me.”

It was getting dark in the room. Gideon’s vision narrowed to a tunnel, with Harrow’s pale face the only light at the far end. A jolt went through her body as her knees hit the floor. 

Sextus yelled something. The sound echoed with the ringing, impossible to decipher, but the lights came back up as Gideon suddenly felt present again. Her vision cleared. Her skin merely ached now, and she shivered, covered in sweat. 

Her Nanoblade was completely sunk into the floor. She had never released the trigger. Gingerly she collapsed it, leaving a trail of dust and a micrometer-wide incision in the tiles. 

“What the hell was that?” Camilla said, pushing herself back to her feet. 

“The ambient EMP field just went up sharply,” Harrow said, sounding, for once, like her mother. Ruthless murder was imminent. “It must have affected your nanites.”

Gideon just wanted to have a nice lie down on the soft tile floor, maybe take a nap, maybe have a quiet little freak out in a corner, but since Camilla was getting back up she staggered to her own feet too. “Nrrr,” she said intelligently. She wiped her face on her sleeve. The nausea and pain were fading and as her brain woke back up her tactical mind started whirring. She caught Camilla’s eye and they shared a moment of silent agreement: they needed to get the fuck out of here.

Palamedes was talking fast now, about how as the Warden of somewhere he was authorized to negotiate with stuff about things. As if Registraria wanted to ally herself with some random-ass rebel state. Gideon could feel it in her still roiling gut: whatever this demon wanted, it was personal, and the answer would be a big ol’ Hell No.

If the door was electrified that was an issue - the nanoblade could be dispersed by a large enough current, and by “dispersed” the manual meant “violently explode, sending atoms flying at the speed of light through everything around them”, which would be bad. Registraria might be bluffing. Or maybe they could cut the power to the door. Gideon could carve through the wall, though there was the chance of hitting the wires _in _the wall. One or two normal voltage wires weren’t a problem but if there was a seriously lethal feed to the door then she needed to avoid that. She could peel off the interior panelling first but that would take time, and Registraria could apparently neutralize her and Camilla in seconds. Camilla must have nanites too, then. Further evidence of her badassery. 

“You can’t be serious.”

It was Camilla’s voice that jerked Gideon’s attention back to the conversation. She looked over her shoulder at Registraria and the nerds, already disapproving of whatever Camilla disapproved of.

“It is your only way forward,” Registraria said. 

She had ditched the fake office background and now stood, slightly larger than life, on a backdrop of black void. It was both corny and pretentious. Harrow probably thought it looked cool. “Say what now?” Gideon asked. 

Harrow’s expression was the blank wall of an uncaring iceberg. “We have been invited to join the Ascension project,” she said. “To upload our consciousness to the machine state and merge with… this.” She gestured with a few fingers at the demon in front of them.

“All of us?” Gideon asked, surprised.

“Not you,” Registraria scoffed. “You can finish out your training as a Cavalier and join the elite forces as you planned. These three, however, possess keen, analytical minds. They would merge harmoniously with us.”

“WOW, rude,” Gideon said.

“At least you’re allowed to live,” Camilla said dryly.

“Cause I’m too dumb to die? Hey, wait, what do you mean, live?” 

Palamedes was carefully cleaning his glasses on a little cloth as he answered her, just in case he didn’t look like a big enough nerd already. “In order to er, ascend, the brain has to be thoroughly examined.”

“They wanna pick your brains apart and stick you in a machine forever?” Gideon was appalled. She had heard some dark, crazy shit in her time but this absolutely crossed the line. “No. Absolutely not. Harrow, no.”

“It seems our options are limited.” Harrow said.

“What, and we gotta decide now?” Gideon demanded.

“Not at all,” Registraria said. “We recognized that this is a surprising outcome for you all. You may take your time to consider it.”

“How long do we have to argue?” Gideon asked.

“Until you run out of food and water,” Registraria said.

“WHAT?”

“So,” she continued, “it will depend somewhat on if you brought any with you, and whether or not you’ll resort to cannibalism. It’s possible that you’ll succumb to the cold first.”

“This is stupid,” Gideon said. She was aware that Palamedes was whispering with Camilla but her attention was squarely on the demon in front of her now. “Why don’t you just kill us all?”

“Because I want the Warden’s mind. The other two are acceptable additions as well.”

“Well then why don’t you just kill Cam and me with your robosorcery and scoop their brains out anyway?” Gideon challenged.

Registraria nodded as if Gideon had made a well-reasoned, intelligent point, and steepled her fingers together in front of her. “Unfortunately, Ascension must be voluntary. We have only attempted it once with an unwilling individual. They had to be excised from the group mind, and data was lost in the process.”

“Was it the one guy with the sense of humour?” Gideon said, scowling. “You can’t actually get away with this forever, you know. There’s other people who know about you outside of campus.”

“Ah, but if Warden Sextus and Ms. Nonagesimus join us, we will know all that they know. That should be enough to throw Redmarx off the track. And of course you would be left to tell whatever story Harrow told you to.”

“Harrow would _be dead_,” Gideon said, her hand a tight fist around the hilt of her sword.

“Dead, but not gone,” Registraria said. 

And then her image flickered, and Harrow stood on the other side of the cold black glass. She was wearing one of her frilly doll dresses, and smiled vacantly at Gideon. “We could be together forever.”

Gideon staggered back with a hoarse shout, raising a hand to ward off the demon. The real Harrow grabbed her arm and pulled her around to command her attention. 

“Cavalier.” Harrow’s eyes were black holes in the dim light. Her grip was painfully tight, and a welcome distraction. “We are going to discuss our options. Go wait by the door.”

“Harrow,” Gideon began.

“That’s a command,” Harrow’s whisper cut her off.

Gideon spun away and stalked down the central aisle towards the door. The electrified door that would maim or kill her to cut open.

Camilla followed her at first, but stopped halfway along the room, no doubt sensing her black mood. Behind her she could hear Harrow and Palamedes calmly debating whether or not to accept the offer. As if they had any choice. 

Gideon stopped in front of the door. 

If a speeding AI was racing down the tracks and about to kill three people, would you flip the switch so that it only killed one person on a parallel track? 

What if you were the one on the parallel track?

Slowly, Gideon slid her finger to the trigger of her sword.

“Camilla,” Palamedes called in a clear, strong voice. “Go loud!”

“Finally!” Camilla shouted. 

Gideon’s head whipped around just in time to see Camilla’s electrolance flash by her face, clearing her nose by inches before it slammed into the door, piercing the steel. Light blinded her and left everything dark and silent, with only the smell of ozone and the echoes of Registraria’s final, cut-off “NO!” ringing in her ears. 

“The door, Nav!” Harrow shouted.

Gideon snapped her sword alive as twin beams from the Sixth house flashlights shone on the now shorted-out door with the fresh puncture mark in it. Two swift slashes from her sword severed the steel completely form the hinges, and with a mighty front kick she booted the door forward, sending it slamming onto the floor of the Archives. 

The four utility bots loomed in the darkness beyond, but before Gideon could pick which one to violently dismantle first, Harrow was there. Short, bird-boned Harrow, raising her umbral arms in an unmistakable gesture of command as she strode boldly into the main hall. Her hands traced intricate patterns in the air as she muttered to herself.

The effect on the robots was immediate and deeply, deeply satisfying. As she stepped forward all four engines ground to life, but before the bots could roll more than a centimetre towards her, their LED lights flickered and their engines died. A sharp little gesture ended the sequence and now all the lights were flashing a slow amber colour and the gentle whirring of processors was the only sound from the bots.

“What sequence was that?” Palamedes asked, eagerly following the two cavaliers into the hall. Camilla stayed between him and the bots, her electrolance once again in her hand as she eyed them warily.

“Factory reset.” Harrow’s voice was deliciously malicious. “They’ll be out for a while.”

“Fuck that’s hot,” Gideon said.

The traitorous little vacuum robot shot out towards them again, but Camilla impaled in one swift stab, like she was spear-fishing for batteries. 

“Nice,” Gideon said, grinning. “So now what the hell do we do?”

“I think that one way or another, our time as students here is done,” Sextus said.

“We need to move.” Camilla collapsed her lance, leading them towards the emergency exit. Not the one to the tunnels, but the one to the stormy lawns outside. “That abomination might have called the authorities. If she turned us in as rebels the army could show up.”

“We’re gonna run?” Gideon belatedly put away her own sword, falling in behind Harrow. 

“We’re going to have to run, Griddle.” Harrow’s voice was tight and hyper monotone, which was basically equivalent to her wailing and freaking out. “But we have one last mission here, first.”

Palamedes nodded his agreement. Camilla said “Damn right we do,” as she shoved open the emergency exit, setting off the fire alarm in the process. She held the door for Palamedes and Gideon double-stepped forward to grab it for Harrow.

“Don’t keep me hanging, Harrow.” Cold spring rain pelted down on her head and shoulders. “What do we have to do?”

Harrow stepped out of the library and looked up at Gideon. It was a perfect moment, one that Gideon would remember forever. Her sexy robowizard-girlfriend’s pale face looked right at her. Harrow's delicate hands tugged her dark hood up to ward off the rain. A flare of lightning flashed in her black eyes, and she spoke those three magic words that made Gideon fall irrevocably in love with her:

“Kill the registrar.”


End file.
